


Better Off Dead

by quickreaver



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Minor Character Death, Swearing, light gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-09
Updated: 2011-10-09
Packaged: 2017-10-24 10:35:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 40,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/262518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quickreaver/pseuds/quickreaver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As much as Sam loathes the idea of returning to California, the boys get a call from Bobby, requesting they make a beeline to San Francisco; a hunter has gone missing.  A hunter Dean knew quite well.  Intimately, one might say.</p><p>The Winchesters discover there are witches, and then there are witches.  Some claim to walk the White Path, but do they?  Or is this just a cover for infernal machinations?</p><p>Between a neo-hippie commune and the exotic temptations of Chinatown’s dark secrets, the Winchesters must untangle a spider’s web of magical allegiances, missing women, and eventually…a missing brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LiveJournal's 2011 GenBigBang. Case!fic. Beta-ed by the wonderful heard_the_owl and D.L. Meyer. Art and alpha read by becc-j, who is DOUBLY wonderful!

*****************************************************************

  


  


Sylvie hit the ground running and didn’t look back.

Her hiding place behind the dumpster had been compromised. Just two minutes before, she’d been wheezing against the filthy, rust-stained metal, trying to listen for footfalls over the sound of her jackhammer heart. She’d been allowing herself a scant few seconds of respite, praying like she’d never prayed before that she’d lost them in city traffic. That they’d gotten delayed at intersections and turned around and couldn’t follow her random, panicked escape between buildings, cars, late-morning commuters. They knew the city far better than she, but Sylvie was tiny, a mere one-hundred pounds of five-foot girl. She could weasel into places even the tall, skinny, crow-like guy couldn’t fit. Slip through breeched chain-link fences and cracked windows and behind wall-pressed dumpsters.

In between breaths, she checked her pistol. Two rounds left. Two shiny torpedoes, blessed and varnished in silver. The tricks of her trade. Not that they’d wound her pursuers any more than a mundane bullet because, dammit, witches were people. Just people. People who mucked about in business they had no right to, even the ones who worked white magicks. It was such a shit-slicked roll downhill when white witches turned gray turned…black? No – red. Red as the blood they stole and cradled in their cursed chalices and smeared on their faces to summon _things_. Some of her best friends here in town were witches but deep inside she hated them all. She had to.

Sylvie willed her heart to settle, wiped palms on jeans to dry the moisture. It would suck hind titty if she lost her last weapon due to an unsightly perspiration problem. She didn’t hear footfalls anywhere close to the alley. The omnipresent ambient noise of traffic and someone’s car radio caterwauling much too loudly for this time of the morning but…did she really give them the slip? Did she manage to take a right turn when they took a left and the sounds of the city disguised her gale-force panting?

Sylvie made the Sign of the Cross and slowly, so slowly, peeked around the edge of the dumpster. The air stank of rotten food and urine and metal but if she could keep her lunch down through the foul perfume of rotting human flesh, this funk was nothing.

A charm bracelet, containing the symbols of every major religion and even some of the less-than-major ones, jingled down her wrist. She held her breath. A drop of sweat tickled the tip of her nose, and Sylvie took one step out for a better view of the alley’s mouth. There was a sound overhead.

The shorter of the two, the one with the curly brown hair that vaguely disguised a graphic scar bisecting his scalp, had somehow made it to the rooftops. Stupid fire-escapes…they snaked up the side of every turn-of-the-century building in San Francisco. She should’ve suspected when she didn’t hear them in hot pursuit.

A shrill whistle split the sky, reverberating off the brick walls. It sent her heart into a frantic tarantella and dropped the bottom out of her stomach.

“JACK.” That was all ScarHead shouted, pointing directly downwards. Sylvie thought she saw him grin, the Frankensteined little fucker. She probably would’ve found him attractive—dark hair and eyes, gypsy-olive skin—if not for the scar. Oh, and that pesky, malignant witchcraft thing.

And so her hiding place behind the dumpster had been compromised.

Sylvie swore under her breath and hit the ground running, never looking back. She rocketed from the alley to the congested sidewalk and saw the other guy, the tall one, in her peripheral vision, half a head above the rest of the populace, half a block away. And he saw her.

Momentum pushed her through the work-a-day lemmings and she dodged under elbows and steaming cups of Starbucks, some of them grousing their objections, but Sylvie kept her head and her gun down. Down the downward sloping streets, steep enough to threaten her footing. She nearly missed a turn, propelling herself into the broad side of a MUNI bus but one outstretched palm, slapped flat to the huge vehicle, bounced her out of traffic and back into the teeming masses. Her lungs ached with each draw of air and every pounding step.

“Hey, girl, watch where you’re –”  
“…sorry…”  
“Bitch, don’t run into –”  
“…suck it…”

Sylvie slipped herself into a crush of pedestrians crossing the intersection and hunkered low, lost among their business suits and tourist t-shirts. She was good at invisibility, being petite. They couldn’t hit what they couldn’t see.

She rode the crowd until it began to fragment, people splitting off to work, shopping, wherever. The city blew by in a blur as she bolted again, gun hidden by the overhanging sleeve of a black hoodie. The air smelled distinctly different here, less vehicular and more briny. Dank, like stale seawater and wet animal. She hadn’t the luxury to ponder the change except to note enormous blue and white flags announcing ‘Pier 39’. Fisherman’s Wharf. The city had terminated into the world-famous vacationists’ Mecca. Which meant she was stuck, quite possibly, at a dead end. Or faced with swimming. Slyvie was a house cat when it came to swimming. Pissy and hating it. Fine, maybe she did have occasion to ponder her locale after all.

Humanity was sparser here, it being early for the sightseeing trade. Thinned, but not disappeared altogether. Behind the main street of storefront — nautical-themed bars, greasy burger joints, crap-filled knick-knack shops — Sylvie found a labyrinth of other stores catering to the city’s many visitors. Pick-a-pearl kiosks, a game arcade, finer dining, all peppering an expansive boardwalk in an illogical tangle that would require a map or GPS to navigate. About time. This was her sort of terrain. She risked a pause, a quick scan of her surroundings, didn’t see Heckle and Jeckle and took off like a rat in the sewers.

Most of the stores weren’t staffed yet but food service had to prepare earlier in the day than retail. There would be an employee entrance open somewhere, a delivery of produce forcing doors ajar. If she could just locate the passageways behind the public facades, she’d be brilliantly lost to any pursuit. Slipped through their fingers, off the grid. Unless…there were spells….

_NO, can’t think that way. Keep your head in the game, Sylvie._ She tried door after door, each rattling and unyielding, before slipping into a Welcome Center where there were far too many curious eyes to vanish into an office or a closet. However there was always the Ladies Room. She smoothed her hair, smiled, and excused herself.

The bathroom was a bathroom like any other, and empty except for Sylvie herself. One tiny window up high for ventilation, several stalls, faux lemony scent. She set the gun on the edge of a sink and splashed her face with cold water, mentally ticking through options as she watched her own reflection drip. Two days ago she’d severed her beloved sable hair to become more unrecognizable; what remained was a boyish mop that made her ears stick out. And it was all for naught. A waste. They found her, regardless. _Okay, okay, stop it. Focus. Get help._

There were only those noisy, high-pressure air dryers in the bathroom so she used her sleeves as towels. Once dried, she pulled a cell phone from her front pocket and hit buttons from memory.

“Come on come on come on,” chanted, as if it would help. It didn’t. The tinny, recorded herald of voicemail brought stinging water to her eyes and a silent expletive to her lips. Wait for the beep; you know what to do. “Eddie. I’ve been made. Blown. You gotta send help. Fisherman’s Wharf. Hurry, please…hurry.” Sylvie disconnected, frowning at the phone, swiping at her leaking eyes. There had to be someone else to call.

She was on the verge of ‘911’ when voices were raised beyond the bathroom door. They didn’t disturb Sylvie as much as the subsequent squeals and thumps and slushy noises that sounded far too viscous to be mere pamphlet-shuffling.

“Ohmygod, sir, you can’t-” Shush, whimper, dull thud. Apparently, he _could._ Sylvie retrieved her gun. She held her breath to hear every single sound, like she did when her car was dying. She would turn off the radio and hold her breath to hear every single sound it made. Didn’t keep the car from giving up the ghost but at least Sylvie was prepared when it sputtered to a dead stop on some side-street in Oakland. It wasn’t actually her car anyway. She ‘borrowed’ it from some neo-hippie in the Haight who didn’t believe in locking the doors. Damn thing reeked of weed, no matter how many scented trees she hung from the rearview mirror.

It got very quiet beyond the bathroom. She didn’t dare call ‘911’ now. There was only the whispering hum of central air conditioning and Sylvie’s own pulse in her ears. Then a phone rang somewhere in the building. Rang and rang and rang. Sylvie frantically turned off her ring tone and stuffed the cell back in a pocket. Looking at the lone window in the bathroom, it was clear she was too short to pull herself up and out the portal; she wasn’t sure it even truly opened more than a token crack.

Slow, silent breaths. If her heart didn’t stop racing she wouldn’t have to worry about discovery. She would just have a fucking heart attack. Beneath the door, a shadow blocked out the light and Sylvie stopped breathing again.

Five minutes passes. Felt like five-hundred. Five-million. Whispers. And the door crept open an inch.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are…” a voice sing-songed. Oh yeah, that was clever. Har-dee-har. What, did he get that from the Master Villains’ Handbook of Popular Quotations or some such crap?

The door continued to ease open. It was the taller of the two men. He curled gaunt fingers around the edge and a lank tuft of black hair preceded him into the bathroom. His face came into view, all scary-thin with a nose as long and narrow and straight as a heron’s beak. And though she couldn’t tell what color his eyes were, she knew they were light. Sylvie remembered him now. So this was Jack. She’s seen him once before, at a bar by Eddie’s place. His angularity and mildly charming smile made a vague impression. He might’ve bought her a drink, chatted her up. Damn it, she was getting sloppy. He couldn’t see Sylvie now, though. She was behind him, pressed flat to the tile wall beside the door’s hinges. The shatter-proof bathroom mirror was angled such that it reflected the three toilets, not Sylvie. Small favors.

She could conceivably be hiding in any of the stalls, standing on a commode, pretending the door ajar meant the cubby was empty.

“Come on, Sylvie. I know you’re here. I can smell you. Reminds me of –”  
he took a breath, smacking his lips as though tasting the air, “– rainbows and unicorns, lollipops and pussy. Is it that time of month, Sylvie? I think it is.”

He was trying to bait her, get her rattled enough to fumble or gasp or give herself away. Like that was gonna happen. Besides, the only thing he could possibly smell was the cloying disinfectant stink of toilet bowl cakes. She wished he’d quit using her name, though. He shouldn’t know her name; she was certain she’d covered her trail better than that.

Having long since released the gun’s safety catch, Sylvie was silently waiting for a clean shot, right through the back of his mangy head because one shot was all she got. Two bullets, one chance. Her arm was extended and leveled, shivering with fatigue and the weight of the gun, but six more inches and he’d be clear of the door. Half a foot and Jack’s brains would be splattered all over the white porcelain sinks.

It should’ve been easy. She was a good shot; he was a close target. But something went wrong. Maybe he saw her reflection in a shiny faucet. Maybe the merest shush of fabric caught his ear. Maybe the Good Guys didn’t always ride off into the sunset. Jack spun around, his tattered gray overcoat whirling like a great wing. Sylvie twitched a finger and the gun reported, deafening as the bang bounced off every hard surface of the bathroom. Her gaze never left her target and for just a heartbeat, she could swear his eyes weren’t light anymore. Quite the contrary, they glittered mean and oily black, like some demented Raggedy Andy doll, ebony buttons where the eyes should’ve been.

Sylvie’s reflexes stuttered as she tried to make sense of what the _hell_ was going on. Jack jerked a hand up in defense and the bullet behaved as though it’d hit an invisible brick. It pinged off in a sharp right that sent the projectile into one of the toilets.

She had never, in all her years, seen a witch do that. Poltergeists could move items in such a fashion, whereas witches sacrificed neighborhood cats and cast spells to make a killing on the stock market, right? Was this what possession looked like? Sylvie had no clue. She’d heard tell of ghosts getting inside people and making them do automatic drawings and leak ectoplasm but this…this was far beyond her scope.

She fired again, her last precious bullet, but the creature that was Jack got in her face, shoving her arm up so that the shot embedded in the ceiling. His fingers were bony vices around her wrist and he kept pulling on her arm, Sylvie’s shoulder giving and trying to dislocate. She bit off a cry, fixing him with a furious glare in defiance of her own terror.

His eyes—they were pale gray.

“Drop the fucking gun, Sylvie, and I won’t snap your pretty little arm like a twig, ‘kay?” Jack, mere inches from Sylvie’s nose, hissed through a bared grin.

He may have thought he had the upper hand until Sylvie’s knee rocketed up and rammed his package into his intestines. Jack released her in a pain-shot hurry. He doubled over with a strangled whine, verging on a retch. All it took to topple him at that point was a shove to the top of his head. He fell back, unable or unwilling to straighten, and Sylvie flung open the bathroom door with her good arm. The other was throbbing and nearly useless.

As she threw herself out into the Welcome Center, her front foot skidded, squeaking on the tile through something wet and red and spurting from the desk clerk’s sliced throat. The slip knocked Sylvie into a wall and set her injured shoulder on fire. Her hand was weak with pins-and-needles; the gun slid from her grip into the blood and she was forced to leave the weapon behind. It was out of bullets anyway.

A desperate survey of the room revealed several unfortunate circumstances. Two more bleeding bodies, one whose hands were still ineffectually clawing at the floor, a security camera in the east corner of the ceiling, and a stunned family of five gawking at the carnage directly in front of the main entrance. Welcome to San Francisco, Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland, Ohio.

The one fortunate event was finding a rear exit that lead into an open-air corridor between several businesses. Sylvie ran clumsily, cradling her aching arm and doing her level best not to bank into another wall. Eventually she broke free into daylight, squinting, briefly blinded. She heard distant sirens and not-so-distant gulls. She had to keep moving, keep putting space between herself and Busted Nuts. She wasn’t in the clear yet, not even a little. Before continuing, she scuffed her sneakers on the ground, drying them of any remaining, telltale red.

She headed off, eyes continually scanning for signs of pursuit or police. She honestly wasn’t sure how many people (to use the term loosely) were after her, and as much as she’d love to bring the cops into this, her past wasn’t exactly squeaky clean. There were more than a few questions she really didn’t want to answer. _Um, officer…about that car in Oakland. And the gun at the Wharf, well, uh…_ Yeah, never mind.

Sylvie paused at a public drinking fountain. Her throat felt wind-burnt, internally sore in dry patches that mirrored the dull throb in her lungs every time she inhaled. Vacating adrenaline left her shaky. Her forehead was clammy under the cold bay wind. Another quick glance around the area and she assessed she was safe for the next three minutes. She pulled her cell phone out of the pocket of her hoodie, thumbed through the saved numbers, hit a button and waited.

“Dammit, isn’t _anybody_ home these days?!” She waited a few more seconds. “Bobby. Hey, it’s me. Sylvie. I…I know I haven’t called in ages, I’m sorry, but I don’t know who else to talk to. I think I’m in deep. Long story. I’m in San Francisco. It’s witches, I think. Look, if you don’t hear from me tonight –” Sylvie swallowed, wincing as she shifted her bad arm “ – if you don’t hear from me tonight, send someone to the Red Victorian Inn. I’m registered under –” Sylvie heard heavy footfalls and upon instinct, looked up to find the source. And the source was Jack. How the hell he found her, she had no idea but it made her nauseous with dread. “Shit. Bobby. Send someone.”

Sylvie bolted like a rabbit, struggling to get the hand of her injured arm secured in her hoodie pocket to keep the limb from jostling. Her fingers grazed something foreign. Something small and cool, felt like a coin. With great effort, because running and cringing and focusing all at once was no easy feat, Sylvie pulled out the item and indeed, it was a coin. So old the image and words were nearly worn smooth but she could tell it was foreign and hand-forged. And she hadn’t put it there herself. _That_ was how he found her. It had to be ensorcelled, some sort of magicked money. She always suspected money was the root of all evil; now, she was certain.

Dodging children that had gathered around an intricately painted carousel, Sylvie dropped the coin and it rolled between the slats of the boardwalk. Jack was still gimping crooked, as well he should be. The Wharf was filling up, day-trippers from all over the world convening for an afternoon of consumerism. And Sylvie was running out of pier.

Morning’s fog had burned off the water but San Francisco liked its rain this time of year. Clouds were still pressing down on the sky, obscuring blue with a menacing, sooty gray. Regardless, a great swell of people were gathering at the very edge of the Wharf, thickly lining almost half a block of it, staring and pointing out over the bay. Sea lions, dozens of them, lounged on floating docks, cheesing for the cameras like local celebrities. Sylvie threaded through the crowd until she was virtually unseen, nestled in the relative safety of humanity. Her shoulder had eased to a stiff, dull twinge but, God, she wished she could just sit down somewhere. Gather her wits about her. Catch her breath. And she prayed someone would call her back.

Sylvie looked down at the phone, which was still clutched in a death-grip. Nothing. It could’ve been a stinkin’ candy bar, for all the good it was. Her stomach complained at the thought of chocolate and caramel, nougat, maybe peanuts. Breakfast had been the last thing on Sylvie’s mind this morning and now she was famished. And thirsty. And some damned tourist was sticking an elbow in her side. Sylvie shifted away from said elbow when the nudge became a sharp jab, and the jab became a bright sting. Sylvie gasped and shot a glare at the source. At the same time, warmth spread down her side.

She was looking at a handsome face, perhaps her own age, early 20’s, eyes large and dark, framed by brown hair that caught auburn in the sun. And a scar that appeared and disappeared as the wind parted the curls. He smiled at Sylvie, and she dropped her phone, pressing a hand to the warmth at her side. The hand came away scarlet. There was a quick scintillation of silver, disappeared into his pocket. He caught her arm, her bad arm, but it just didn’t seem to hurt anymore. Nothing felt real, everything got dull and cobwebby, cold except for the spot at her waist. The boisterous barking of the sea lions grew so very distant. Sylvie wilted, and the world went away.


	2. Chapter 2

  


Interstate 1 cut a serpentine ribbon into the West Coast, a scenic slither of pavement below cool sky and above the undulating horizon of ocean. Slipping like a black rat down a snake’s throat, the ’67 Impala hugged the highway, low to the road and moving too fast. Nature of the beast: it could move no other way. Not under the command of this particular driver.

Dean Winchester was never more relaxed than when behind the wheel of his baby. Not even in sleep, because sleep meant dreaming and dreaming meant his brain did dumb shit like rehash memories he’d rather not. Memories of Dad. Dad’s murmured deathbed demands. Death, in general. God dammit, yesterday was gone, done, spun out. Now if only his sub-conscious would get the memo.

Dean drummed fingers on the steering wheel and watched the scenery blow by at a reckless roll. The windows were down and yesterday’s music keened from the tape deck. He could use a frosty beer but apart from that, Dean was at one with the world. Well, half of one.

He cut a glance to the guy riding shotgun. His baby brother. The other half of his one. The half that refused haircuts and had the nerve to get taller and pulled the best bitchfaces in response to his jokes because, hell, Dean was just that hilarious.

Sammy had his arm out the window, palm flattened, air-surfing. His hair danced riotously, eyes narrowed because he didn’t bother with sunglasses if he wasn’t driving. Dean was, and had consequentially liberated the last Quick Stop of a pair of silver-framed aviators, the kind with slick mirrored lenses. The kind you saw on Highway Patrol.

Sam had shrugged nonchalantly when Dean offered to steal a second pair and Sam declined. “Light eyes tend to be more photosensitive.”

“Why do you even know that?” Feh, purely rhetorical. Sam was probably just futzing about the petty theft; some days he played at being an upstanding, law-abiding citizen. As if. Dean harbored no such qualms and didn’t see why Sam bothered, except that it was the exact opposite of whatever Dean wanted. Or what Dad would’ve wanted. Likely the latter.

The air was crisp, despite California’s famous sunshine. It bit sharp through the car, pulling at clothing and flinging fast food wrappers out the windows like shedding skin. It kept Dean’s senses bright, nose and earlobes tingling, lips dry and tasting of salt.

How could Sam be in a stone funk? This? This was a little piece of alright.

But Sam’d been visibly hostile in his customary passive-aggressive fashion as soon as the Impala had hit the Cali border. Lips set in a stubborn line, jaw slightly forward, long fingers fiddling in agitation on knees pressed against the dash for lack of better leg room, it was like sitting in a box with a wet cat and Dean didn’t care for cats, let alone wet ones. Sam had glowered harder when Dean had tried to assuage the tension with a mixtape of obscure cock-rock classics and banter about who was the hotter make-believe babe, Velma or Daphne. Daphne was the obvious choice because hello, redhead, right? And the short skirt, legs that went on for miles. But Velma had the “geek chic” thing going and I bet she’s a tiger in bed and –

“Dean, God, really? Shut. Up.” Said with a dour hiss of breath.

Dean had glared at Sam sidelong, rolled his eyes, but bit back a mean reply. So much for small talk. Looked like he was going to be picking the tunes _and_ shutting his cakehole, in the interest of familial peace. Dean had been fairly certain he knew the source of Sam’s angst anyway. Stanford. Jess. ‘Normal’ life, abandoned, though in truth it had never stood a ghost of a sliver of a shred of a chance. A year and a half later, and Sam was still a raw wound where his college disaster was concerned.

Dean housed such consternation about Sam’s quest for normalcy that when it had all fallen apart like a carefully spun spider web in a thunderstorm, there was bittersweet relief. Might’ve been selfish to feel Sam belonged to him, owed him for the years of lost childhood and indoctrinated self-sacrifice, because frankly, none of it had been Sam’s doing. Not a minute of it. And Jess, well yeah, she was admittedly a rare find and hardly deserved to be consumed in flames on the ceiling of some cheap student apartment. But see, the universe watched. And if you were paying attention, you picked up on the gems it was dropping and ran with them as far as your determination could propel you. Dean didn’t know if there was some big master plan — in fact, he sincerely doubted it — but you seized the day. The hour. The second. That’s what you had. All you had. And right now, the universe had given Sam back. You didn’t ask why, you just said “thank you very much, ma’am” and greedily carried on.

Visible even through the late-afternoon sun, through the road-dirtied windshield, the moon was a phantom satellite frozen in endless glacial blue. Robert Plant’s plaintive wail lamented how he’d “spent his days with a woman unkind who smoked his stuff and drank his wine.” Dean wanted to know that woman. And she would wear glacial blue eyes to sync up with the sky because this was California and unkind women deserved no fidelity and they were easily fooled by their own unkindness and Dean needed to get his rocks off. He was mildly surprised by his own high spirits, excepting a niggle of worry about Sylvie. Who did not, for the record, have blue eyes.

Shit, Sylvie.

Now that Sam’s ire had ebbed to low-grade white noise, Dean entertained the thought of conversation again. They were going to have to talk about the job sooner rather than later.

By his estimation, they sat an hour out of San Francisco, maybe two. Dean possessed a near-flawless sense of direction but big cities took patience and concentration to navigate without putting his head through the dashboard in frustration. “As the crow flies” just didn’t exist in a city of any real size, especially one as socked in as San Francisco. It wasn’t that Dean disliked cities, per se, but they presented particular snafus when it came to the old salt n’ burn gig. Nothing could be done in secret; there were always civilian eyes to consider. Too many cops and cameras and do-gooders and fucknuts getting underfoot. Not to mention the simple act of safely parking the Impala caused Dean heart palpitations. Okay, maybe cities did annoy Dean. A tad. They wouldn’t get any serious work discussion accomplished once wheels hit the tangle of those steep urban streets.

And this particular job couldn’t be relegated to any other hunter. This one was personal. Sam had every right to detest an entire state based on a fistful of miserable memories, but even he wouldn’t have refused this. He was, however, determined to emit a generous stink of sulk the entire way there. Thankfully, the windows were down to air out the car.

Both brothers knew Sylvie…Dean, more Biblically than Sam. The summer right before Sam’s mutiny to college, Sylvie breezed through Singer’s Salvage Yard, a protégé of Bobby’s. Hunters came and went; it was their lot. They got into the life for myriad reasons, each as particular as the hunters themselves. Sometimes peculiar, always tragic. This wasn’t hunting for sport. Some days you could fool yourself into thinking it was, but to do so for more than five minutes meant somebody, not some _thing_ , was in big trouble. As soon as you saw your own blood or the ichorous junk leaking from God-knows-what, and lived the whipsaw terror induced by a creature that should never have been, a primordial fear as deeply ingrained in the reptilian brain as instinct itself, you knew this wasn’t merely hunting. This was species survival.

Sylvie almost made it hunting. She was a hip little slip of a girl, clearly too cool for either Winchester but that made Dean aim all the more sharply to get into her pants by way of her good graces and his irrefutable charms. She had more in common with Sam, talked classic literature, existentialism and alt-indie bands with him, ad nauseum, boring Dean to mindless oblivion. But it was Dean who had rocked her world in the back seat of the Impala. Sam had insisted, with no small amount of snarkiness, that Sylvie was just slumming. Dean fancied she succumbed to his feral allure.

Either way, she was the wild-child female counterpoint to all the Winchester macho posturing. Had even dragged a smile from Dad now and again. Sylvie had made that summer bearable, or at least the chunk of July she’d wasted at Bobby’s.

Dean never did find out how she got into The Life. He was jonesin’ to ask, but the avenue of conversation never opened. And really, why spoil a perfectly good superficial relationship-with-benefits by hauling baggage into the scenario? It was enough that they didn’t have to tap-dance around supernatural subject matter; he even learned a thing or two about selkies from Sylvie. She was his sweet spot in an otherwise shitty summer. Dean already knew Sam was leaving for Stanford by that point; Dad did not, and it had promised to get ugly. Well, that was one promise kept, brilliantly.

“So. Who’s hotter: Fred or Shaggy?” Dean slid a grin Sam’s way, canting his chin and edging sunglasses down his nose, casually assessing his brother’s temper.

Sam refused to turn his head but Dean caught sight of dimple through all that stupid hair. Yeah, the emo fog was lifting. About stinkin’ time. There was only so much pouting Dean could stomach. Such a goddamn waste of energy, valid reason or no.

“Right,” Dean continued, “I know you’re all about Freddie. You like ‘em buff and blonde-”

“Dean.”

“Hey, I’m not judging.”

“At least I don’t moan for Shaggy in my sleep. You couldn’t handle Fred. Too much cartoon man for you.”

“Sammy! I’m offended.” Dean thumbed his sunglasses back in place and slapped the steering wheel. “Guess we’ll have to talk about something else before I cry.”

By way of sheepish apology, Sam stared at his knees for a moment. Neither of them was good with “I’m sorry.” Just wasn’t in the genes. But Dean knew Sam was thinking it.

“So what’d Bobby say?” Sam finally turned in his seat and tried to stretch his legs, joints popping in protest.

“Two days ago he got a call from Sylvie. Apparently, she’s landed herself into a big steamin’ heap of headache with a coven in San Francisco.”

“Witches?”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious. Yeah, that’s the working theory. Jesus, I hate witches. They take baths in the ashes of orphaned babies, I swear.”

“Duly noted. And?”

“And Bobby said she sounded like someone was after her. I mean right on her heels. She set up camp at a joint called The Red Victorian Inn. We should start there. Google it, Nerdly.”

Sam started an objection to the nickname but gave up almost immediately. Dean saw it out of the corner of his eye and grinned.

Fishing his Moto Q from a pocket, Sam began tapping buttons. The phone looked like a pack of gum in his big mitt. “Has he heard from her since?”

“Nope.”

Off-hand catching the front of his wind-crazy hair, Sam skimmed the fruits of the internet, nodding. “Sweet, it’s in the Haight –”

“What? Hippydippy Land?” Dean curled a lip. “Groovy. I don’t do wheatgrass, just so’s you know. I’ll leave all the granola and patchouli to you.”

“I thought you didn’t judge?”

“I lied.”

“Hey, there’s more to Haight-Ashbury than the Summer of Love, Dean. _Which_ , I woulda thought, you’d be all over like white on rice.”

“I like my girls shaved and bathed thanks.”

Sam snorted. “Again with the judging. Anyway, yeah, Charles Manson had a house in the neighborhood, once upon a time. Got to be bad psychic juice hanging around that place. Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead, of course...” He paused, skimming the microscopic screen. “Dude. North Beach. We have to go to North Beach.”

Dean’s brows hoisted over the sunglasses. “Because why?”

“What, really? North Beach. The Beat Poets? Kerouac, Ginsberg, the Hungry I?”

Now it was Dean’s turn to mouth empty air like a beached trout. And Sam was doing all the grinning.

“I’ll take you to The City Lights Bookstore. We’ll buy a copy of “Howl”. You’ll thank me.”

Dean watched Sam for a good few minutes, caught somewhere between annoyance and relief. Yeah, he’d heard of Ginsberg and “Howl”; Dean didn’t live in a total cultural wasteland. But so what? It was far more important to let Sam think he could show his big brother something awesome. Blow his mind. Do _normal_ for a change, if prowling musty bookstores in search of dirty words was normal. Dean felt something tiny and warm squirm where his heart sat.

“You got it, Sammy. Whatever you say.”


	3. Chapter 3

  


"Sam."

"Yeah, Dean?"

Dean cranked his head back, studying the building in front of them with a critical eye. "This hotel is not red enough."

Which was, of course, an absurdity because the place couldn't have been redder. As red as Clifford the Big Red Dog, Sam observed silently because if he dared say that aloud, Dean would never let him live it down.

Red as a particular shade of lipstick, on a particular girl with whom Sam had wanted to share his name. But Sam couldn't go down that path any more than he could reveal his Clifford reference. In addition to being empty and whiny, his stomach was once again beginning to curdle with an indistinct wad of gloom. Maybe the lack of food left a convenient spot for depression to settle, not that it needed an excuse to use Sam as its mothership. Despite the blindingly cheerful, retina-burning shade of the Red Victorian Inn, Sam still hated the Golden State and he didn’t see that scenario changing anytime soon.

"Right. So. We gonna stand here like tourists from Sheboygan or we heading into – " Dean rolled his gaze down the building to a gold peace sign, stenciled on one of the windows " – Meditation Station?"

Sam simply grunted.  
Dusk was dropping over the neighborhood and the appearance of oddities seemed to be in direct proportion to the vanishing of the sunlight. Haight-Ashbury still played home to indigents of all stripe: runaways, addicts, club kids, street corner philosophers, students of life. The gutters were rife with cigarette butts and other such bits of human thoughtlessness. Sam sighed and settled his hands in his pockets. He was, at the very least, relieved they nabbed—with minimal wailing from Dean—a safe parking space for the Impala. Regardless, their required presence in California still sucked. And it was getting downright cold, not just pleasantly brisk. Though something about the cold fit Sam and he didn’t want to move. He wanted to stand there and be uncomfortable.

Drifting eyes from peace sign to moping brother, Dean sighed too. He was certainly hungry, because Dean was always hungry and the hotel had a café on the first floor, within eyeshot, but he seemed to be willing to give Sam a few minutes to regroup. A blessed moment of patience. Sam appreciated that.

"Yeah, it's really red." And so Sam reluctantly headed inside, through well-worn, brass-handled doors.

It wasn't immediately apparent where the front desk sat; the entry opened onto the Peaceful World Café, red theme carried over the walls in a deeper, less insulting hue. The tables wore frilly pink tablecloths, which made no damn sense to Sam, and the place was empty save two employees and one couple, all nursing coffees. The couple had probably been young and beautiful during the Monterey Pop Festival. Clearly locals. Just inside the door, an entire wall was papered with pamphlets that fluttered in the cold riding on the Winchester’s heels, and you could buy a souvenir mug with, surprise surprise, a peace sign on it for $7.50, plus tax. If you pined for an answer blowin’ on the wind, my friend, you’d have hit pay dirt.

Dean scanned the room and took a deep breath, rocking on his heels. “Smell that, Sammy?” He whispered from the corner of his mouth.

“Huh? The sandalwood?”

“Smells like dead hippies.”

“Hey, man, everything copasetic?” A guy with stringy, graying hair, round glasses a la John Lennon, and a dented top hat lifted up two fingers in a ‘v’ and shifted from his perch behind the counter.

“You’d better hope he didn’t hear you harshin’ his mellow like that,” Sam said in Dean’s ear.

Dean gave Sam a dismissive “pffft” and sauntered over to the guy, all the while scanning a hand-written menu which hung on the wall over the top hat. Dean nodded congenially, but his grin flagged as he seemed to realize there was a conspicuous lack of meat product available. “Okay, so...hmm. I’ll have a…well…”

“We’ll have two Greek Goddess Wraps, large coffees, a cup of the soup of the day and how ‘bout a chocolate croissant. Thanks.” Sam appeared over Dean’s left shoulder and saved him the trouble of deciphering the vegan/vegetarian fare.

Dean squared his shoulders and gave Sam an “I’d better like this shit” look before fishing out one of his many fraudulent credit cards and sliding it across the counter. “Oh, and hey, maybe you can help us. Our sister is supposed to be staying here but we just blew into town and we want to surprise her. It’s her birthday coming up and we’ve got a car full of balloons. And a clown.”

Sam rolled his eyes.

The guy returned Dean’s card and a receipt to sign, along with a pen that had ‘San Francisco’ printed on the side in puffy, rainbow lettering. His teeth were big and yellowed as he grinned, and his head bobbed up and down and side to side like a frazzled old parrot. “Cool, man. What’s she look like? Everyone eats breakfast here. Most important meal of the day, right on.”

“Yeah, right on. She’s about yay tall—” Dean held his hand at chest level “—real cute. Dark hair, dark eyes. Might’ve had a charm bracelet that jangled a lot. Probably alone.”

“Oh, yeah, man. I remember the bling. She was here a coupla days ago. But she wasn’t alone. Had some friends.”

Sam piped up. “What did they look like? The friends? I mean, might’ve been our cousins.”

“I dunno, man. Just kids. Like her. Like you cats.”

“You know what room she was in?”

The guy shrugged, slid a laden tray across the counter and grabbed two oversized mugs from a shelf. “Not my department, man. Sorry.” He poured coffee, passed the mugs off to Dean who nodded his thanks and headed for a far table. Given the option, Dean always sat with his back to the wall in such a way he could still watch the front door. Sam followed with the tray.

They ate quickly, and Dean even admitted whatever the hell food Sam had ordered them, it wasn’t half bad. _“Okay, so this Green Goddess whatsit doesn’t look like a bacon cheeseburger but hey, there are worse crimes.”_ The café started to fill up with dinner guests and that was the boys’ cue to get lost in the shuffle and infiltrate the ‘Bed’ portion of the ‘Bed and Breakfast.’

It wasn’t difficult. The Red Vic had an air of archaic trust, a pointed attempt at resurrecting the “we-are-all-one-people-here-eat-this-mushroom” idealism of the 60’s. No one looked twice at Sam or Dean as they slipped up a narrow staircase to the second floor of the building, as directed by a sign hanging from a radiator pipe: Upstairs since 1904*Ask for a Tour*The Red Victorian Bed and Breakfast.

More red, this time on the threadbare carpet that ran up the creaky wooden steps. Sam scraped his knuckles on the ugly stuccoed walls and dodged his head beneath low-hanging switchbacks. It was claustrophobic. You could barely squeeze past a second person if they happened to be going down as you were coming up. Dean led the way, of course, and though his shoulders were loose and casual, he snapped his head around corners, eyes darting. Few things caught him off-guard, at least physically.

Theoretically, Sylvie would’ve kept to the second floor, if possible. The closer to the ground you were, the easier the get-away. And failing that, if you could snare a room by a fire escape or back staircase, more’s the better. So Dean started there, at the end of the hall by an ivy-curtained window. Sam provided copious cover, lurching broad-shouldered and blocking any passers-by from witnessing their illegalities.

The door, according to a small framed plaque that hung in its center, led to the Golden Gate Park Room. The plaque went on to direct a person to ‘Always remember to celebrate your proximity to something beautiful. Spend a lot of your time there.’

_Something beautiful?_ Sam huffed a small laugh and Dean knew exactly what Sam was snorting about, given their proximity. Dean shot him an elbow to the ribs in reward. The lock clicked free and revealed an empty room. Empty of a tenant, but not of copious amounts of frilly, floral antiques. “Grandma chic,” Dean snickered. Point was, the room wasn’t Sylvie’s. On to the next.

The Rose Garden Room. ‘A place to sit in the window and contemplate the amazing mixture of life below. Take your time. Remember, the roses stand for love.’ Much love, but no Sylvie.

Sunshine Room. ‘Here is a room to energize you with the same warmth that supports all life. Smile back at the sun when you brush your teeth and see yourself in the magic mirror.’ Luggage sat on a white chenille bedspread, but clearly not the sort a hunter would haul. More likely a middle-aged woman on a ‘finding herself’ weekend.

Someone strolled past on their way to the communal bathroom, to whom Sam and Dean both nodded and smiled. _These are not the droids you’re looking for._ It was Sam’s superstitious little chant, every time they did this.

Ah, the Redwood Forest Room. Well-boded, because it was on the opposite end of the hall by the front fire-escape. Sam didn’t bother reading the plaque this time, enough of that shit. Spindly black railings cast spidery shadows through the window as evening gave way to night. Dean jimmied the lock and let the door drift ajar.

A small tableside light had been left burning and the bed was unmade, dull mauve quilt thrown across a chair, sheets dragged in the opposite direction. Sylvie had never once made her bed; she’d proclaimed it unnecessary given the fact it would just get trashed again in twelve hours. Her own protocol of practicality. Another good omen.

Duffel bags and dirty clothes dotted the roomscape; the weapons would be secreted under a mattress or in the bottom of a dresser or a closet corner. Sometimes even the tank of the toilet but there didn’t seem to be an en suite bath to this room. On the far wall, the photo of a redwood forest had been blown up and pasted, like wallpaper, keeping to theme. And taped all through the photocopied branches were newspaper clippings, post-it notes, pages ripped from books, strung together with various colored yarn, secured by thumbtacks. Management would not be happy.

“Yahtze,” Dean murmured, stepping cautiously into the room, alert for trip wires or any other protection Sylvie might’ve fabricated. Sylvie could make a booby trap from dental floss and maxi pads, if need be. Sam had seen her do it.

He followed, once Dean moved enough to allow him entry. The room was tiny and the lax housekeeping left little space to maneuver. Dean immediately began pawing through her possessions; Sam went right for the case wall, eyes darting from clipping to note to chicken scrawl, trying to get a bead on what was going on here.

There were the expected crib notes on witchcraft—the boys already knew they were dealing with a coven—but in addition to that, Sylvie had collected a handful of information concerning missing women. She had highlighted their ages in day-glo pink: 24, 33, 38, 27, 19. Reasonably young. Physically, they didn’t share much except, well, tits and all the typical girly parts. And they’d disappeared in the past four months. Hannah West. Jane Birmingham. Felicity Rebeau. Several others.

Sam followed the women’s length of yarn to an old, creased postcard of Chinatown. It depicted the neighborhood at twilight, golden lanterns roped across the streets like giant fireflies, the building’s sharp, unfamiliar angles silhouetted against a radiant, crimson and maize sky. “San Francisco, Chinatown” it read in gold foil script, preceded by a vertical series of Chinese characters. Sam slipped the postcard off the wall and flipped it over…nothing written on the back. _Hmm. wasn’t it the Year of the Dog?_

“Aw, shit. Dude, come ‘ere.” Dean’s voice was gruff and displeased. Dangling from his pinched fingers was a small cloth package. Sam knew a hex bag when he saw one. “This does not bode well.”

Sam had to lumber across the edge of the bed to peer over Dean’s shoulder. The fabric of the bundle was a scrap of t-shirt, tied up tight with a leather cord that had a small feather affixed to one end. Like they did for roach clips, Sam observed with some bemusement. Dean shook it, unnecessarily, before unwrapping the make-shift bag and displaying its contents in his palm.

“What the…well that’s the dumbest hex bag I’ve ever seen.” Dean poked a finger through the strange assortment of items. Yes, hex bags, by their very nature, were designed to be strange assortments of items: bones, gems, obscure herbs, sometimes gewgaws associated with certain otherworldly beings. But this one put a finer point on _strange._ “I mean, look at this junk! M &Ms. I guess this is…hair. A baby tooth, maybe? And a Barbie shoe…seriously?”

“How do you know that shoe belongs to a Barbie?”

“Shuddup, Sam. Barbie is hot; of course I know it’s a Barbie shoe. Besides, I got you Sapphire Barbie for Christmas that one year. Don’t make like you didn’t play with it.”

“I didn’t play with it because you wouldn’t let it out of your sight—hey, is that an 8-sider? Huh.” Sam looped a long arm over Dean’s shoulder and pointed at an oddly shaped orange die.

“Gamer geek.”

“Barbie lover.”

“Bitch.”

“Jerk.”

Dean’s mouth opened to lob another retort but the words froze on his lips. Soft voices issued from the hallway, just beyond the bedroom’s closed door. Sounded like gentle, tuneless singing. Gregorian chant? No, not quite that ‘DaVinci Code’, Sam decided. Both boys snapped their glares to the portal, breaths collectively held. Dean dropped the unfurled hex bag on the bed and slowly crept a hand to the small of his back, where Sam knew he hid a Colt .45. Sam shifted to the right, giving Dean a clear shot. An accidental bullet to the shoulder would certainly put a crimp in the evening, not to mention hurt like a sonofabitch.

The voices quieted. There remained only the omnipresent sounds of traffic and the old building groaning, as old buildings are wont to do. Dean got that laser-edged intensity he did when he was aiming with his hearing as much as his sight. Which was why Dean was such a damned brilliant shot. Sam had a good eye, but Dean was phenomenal. It was like he became the gun. Almost Zen in his concentration.

Dean leveled the weapon and nodded for Sam to flank the door. It took Sam one careful step, that’s how small the room was. Sam expected the knob to rattle, to twist like a bad horror movie. _Heeeeere’s Johnny._ But it didn’t. Instead, there was a soft rustle and a folded piece of paper was slipped under the door. Simple notebook paper. Sam glanced at Dean, whose brows were angled in perplexed annoyance.

_What do I do?_ Sam mouthed silently.

Dean looked from Sam, to the note, Sam, note, Sam. He quirked a shoulder, read as a shrug, scowling, gun still at the ready.

Sam grimaced back, curiosity gnawing at him with its insistent little teeth. The air suddenly felt saturated with the unknown and Sam hated not knowing. Few things got on his last nerve like the absence of knowledge. It was an itch, pins and needles, crawling under his skin and through the little gray cells and whispering _listen listen listen._ Sam crouched and in one swift move, snatched up the note. Quick as a whip, in case someone on the other side was looking for his shadow, to take aim. Or a tentacle shot under the door and snaked around his wrist. Or some other such equally bizarre Winchester happenstance.

When nothing came to pass, and not the slightest burp sounded from the other side of the door, Sam opened the slip of paper.

No words, just a symbol, or sigil, hand-drawn. In green crayon? The fuck? Sam turned the paper to face Dean, who looked equally befuddled.

Then the room slid sideways.

Everything smeared into weird jet streams of color, Technicolor spaghetti, and it hit Sam as suddenly as a sneeze. He barely construed Dean lowering the gun until it brushed the bed and slipped harmlessly from his fingers. Dean wobbled, anger poorly maintained and within seconds, it segued into dull confusion. From there, apparent sleep. He face-planted onto the mattress, lids fluttering, fighting unconsciousness to no avail.

Sam could do little more than grunt, himself. And sway. His hands wouldn’t respond to even the simplest command. The paper drifted casually to his boots, face up, cheerful little sigil laughing at him and winking…winking? When did it grow a face?!

The door opened and closed. Several people entered the room but for all he could tell, they could’ve been ostriches. Nothing made sense.

One spoke. His…yeah, it was a man…his voice rippled and pulsed and rode in on blisters of sound, popping intermittently so that Sam caught only sporadic words. “Lucky” and “get the gun” and “falafel” though that might’ve been “awful” and maybe a name… “Eddie?”

Another ersatz ostrich approached Sam, looked up at him, set two fingers to his chest and pushed. Sam fell like the proverbial redwood, which managed to be slightly amusing given the décor of the room. He must’ve clocked his head against the bed’s brass frame because the jolt of pain gave him a moment of clarity, a blaze of sentience, even if his limbs were still sluggishly full of mush.

“Eddie. We have ‘em. Big fuckers, dunno how we’re gonna…home…owe…” and the rest dissolved into something akin to the voice of Charlie Brown’s teacher. Sam fought to stay alert, scrutinized the guy as he spoke on a cell phone, tried to memorize the face he couldn’t see. Like the features were deliberately obscured, scratched out with a pencil, x’s for eyes. The man turned, noticed Sam watching, and gently ran his free hand over Sam’s lids. They closed, and that, as they say, was _that_.


	4. Chapter 4

  


Dean’s head felt like a rotting pumpkin. A pumpkin that had been left out on a prairie and picked at by crows. Then kicked by a team of mules before finally splitting open and puking its brainseeds out into the universe, googolplexes of pumpkin bits, stoically carried off by karmic scavengers. Retaliation, perhaps, for being so glib about Sam’s bookish tendencies. Googolplex…he learned that one from Sam, lost a bet to him in fact, when Sam swore that’s where the term ‘google’ came from and Dean was damned certain Sam was just jerking his chain. Some absurdly large number, like a ‘gazillion’ but real. God, it made his brain thud to think that far back. A lifetime ago.

By sheer force of will, Dean dragged an eye open but only by a slit. Why did his lids weigh two-hundred pounds? Each? His mouth tasted like soured milk, a fitting accompaniment to the curds that passed as recent memory. Dubious images drifted to the surface of his thoughts, one stroke to each painful throb.

Redwoods. Barbie shoes. A single folded scrap of paper which, once opened, made the world go all pear-shaped. Working this hard to remember yielded nothing but gobbledygook. Wasn’t worth the pain and effort and brain-rending task of recollection.

Dean switched from murky memories to his current state of affairs. The surface under his cheek shifted, rubbery and sweaty and squishy, rustling oddly when he worked his jaw. And it occurred to Dean, crept into realization at the corner of his wakefulness, that he had been drooling in this forced sleep. Awesome.

He attempted to open a second eye as voices meandered into range, full of fuzz, flirting with clarity but not quit there.

“…one’s awake…pockets…pass the…and then he said…”

Dean swallowed though it took no small amount of difficulty, parched because all his spit had apparently leaked out onto whatever unrecognizable material pillowed his rotting melon.

Pale, amoeboid shapes coalesced in front of him until he recognized the Rorschach blotches as facial features. The void where a mouth must’ve been widened, rounded into an ‘oh’, and exhaled soft, pale vapors, obscuring Dean’s tenuous view of the world. Not that it mattered a damn; at present, he couldn’t tell his ass from a hole in the ground. The fog had a vaguely familiar pungency, warmth, laughter. Took him a moment to place the smell of weed. Not altogether unpleasant but given the circumstances, wholly inappropriate.

Dean screwed up the energy to loll his head away from the pot smoke, offering a wan cough to the heavens.

A second voice spoke from several feet away, this time more clearly. Reality was making a concentrated attempt to revisit Dean’s life. How kind of it.

“Poke him with a stick. See if he moves again.”

“Poke me and you’ll be missing fingers.” Dean expelled words, dry and groggy and not the least bit amused.

“Too late, asshole.”

He squinted up at the source of the second voice. Male, roughly his own age, raw-boned like a marathoner, holding up a hand to Dean and true to statement, missing digits. Two fingers gone at the second joint, ring finger and pinky. Dean groused and attempted to hoist up into something vertical but it just wasn’t happening. His legs were pumped full of lead.

_Shit. Sam._

A fresh jolt of adrenaline pushed away the weight and Dean managed to lurch sideways, heavy boots slamming a hardwood floor rolling off of—what the hell? A beanbag chair? Yes indeed, he’d been thrown onto a jumbo, black vinyl beanbag, and the thing got all tricksy and evasive when Dean tried to gather enough purchase to stand. Didn’t help that his wrists were confined at his navel by handcuffs. And not just your garden-variety cuffs either; these were mittened in hot pink faux fur. Could this kidnapping get any weirder?

The room settled into focus, if still nebulous around the edges. _‘Bout fucking time._ Dean located Sam flopped unceremoniously on the floor not fifteen feet away. Belly-down. Hands bound behind his back by what looked like a length of rough rope, probably hemp considering these long-haired freaky-people. Outgrown bangs obscured Sam’s face but occasional tufts fluttered with each rhythmic breath. Sleeping like a big baby. Dean always marveled at how young Sam looked when he slept, all the sharp plains of his face relaxed and unlined. Snoring, but otherwise safe. Safe- _ish_. No spilt blood, yet.

He continued to survey his surroundings: coffee table, their guns and knives on said coffee table, clay-potted house plants, dust bunnies, sneakers and flip-flops and obnoxiously colored rubber clogs all piled in a corner. This was some sort of residential building, someone’s living room as opposed to a sewer or warehouse or dungeon. And Dean had been in more than a few dungeons, so he knew.

Apart from the brothers Winchester, four other men peopled the room. Ol’ Eight-Fingers. The guy with the joint, who was tanned and possessed massive quantities of ill-mannered black hair. Might’ve been Hispanic. A younger kid, frail-looking with locks dyed an unreal shade of violet, sitting cross-legged on a battered couch while his fingers flew over the keyboard of a laptop. And the last guy, serious blue eyes watching Dean with quiet but decided mistrust, arms folded over his chest, neatly groomed, closed up, tightly wound. Looked like he might explode if he got next to something sharp, like Dean.

“So. I think this is the part where you bark threats, act all super-evil and make like you’re the ones in charge?” Dean was still struggling to sit, his balance catawampus what with the beanbag shifting like quicksand. Eight Fingers reached over and hauled him upright by the scruff. “Hey, don’t bruise the peaches, man.”

“I’ll keep my hands off your fruit if you tell me why you were at the Red Vic,” Eight Fingers said, dropping his cargo into a seated position.

Dean blinked away a quick spin of vertigo, making quite certain Sam’s prone form was still in his peripheral vision. Dean also noted a slight limp to the guy, filed that away for future strategic purposes. Nothing like the swift kick to a trick knee to level the playing field. He might be able to best the guy, as long as Sam was up and moving. The others would be small potatoes pending no further ensorcelled Post-It notes. _That_ was dirty pool, dammit.

Dean offered his best, “trust me” grin, even though the likelihood it would charm anyone in the room was slim to none. It never hurt. “Oh, you know, I wanted to get in touch with my inner flower child. Drop out, tune in, turn on. Do a little California dream – ”

Blue-eyed Mr. Serious interrupted, with a serious British accent. Which just sort of figured. “Simon. Go get Eddie.”

The computer nerd, Simon, darted a quick glance, “Why me?” written all over his face but he shut the laptop and padded out of the room, his movements terse as a bird’s.

_So that’s how it is_ , Dean mused, mentally placing each man in this pack dynamic. The Brit was the brains of the operation, cucumber cool and possibly quite ruthless. The stoner, their crime specialist, underworld connections and dark diplomacy. Eight-Fingers was clearly the muscle and not afraid to get hurt. His skin bore a great many visible scars including but not limited to the lost fingery bits, disfigurements rivaling that of a hunter’s. And the purple-haired kid could likely crack any code, hack like an MIT graduate, kick World of Warcraft’s virtual ass. But all this begged the question: what the ever lovin’ fuck? Dean would bet ten dollars against a kick in the ass they’d magicked him and Sam unconscious. So if these were “witches”, what the hell sort of coven was this? Like none he’d ever seen before, that’s what.

Dean heard thin strains of music floating from a different room, a radio left playing. Something uncommon, with lots of jangling guitar and sinuous voice. The place reeked of pot burning and cookies baking, not an unusual combination all told. Just unusual in the context of Satanic worship and small animal sacrifice. It was dark beyond the thinly curtained windows, dark but cloudy with the ambient light of the city. Dean glanced at his watch; he’d been snoozing an hour and some change. And he had to piss like a race horse but that would have to wait.

The casual heel/toe report of boot steps entered the room behind Dean. He wasn’t going to look, wasn’t going to give his captors the honor of thinking he was ruffled or worried or even cared in the slightest. But he was sweating. And when the men straightened just perceptibly and the atmosphere changed timbre and The Brit unfolded his arms to stand at attention, Dean sweated a little harder. No doubt Boss Man had just arrived. Dean wriggled his right ankle but there was no telltale pressure of the knife usually concealed there. _Crap, they got that too._

The boots circled around and stopped in front of Dean with his classy black beanbag and hot pink handcuffs. Battered cowboy boots, small for a dude…just the right size for a woman. That suspicion was confirmed by a stretch of smooth, tanned leg that ran from boot to short tattered denim skirt, the sort patchworked from an existing pair of jeans. She tapped her toe and looked down at Dean quizzically, Bambi-brown eyes narrowed and hair the color of butterscotch a jumble at her shoulders. Dean caught a whiff of cinnamon, not sulfur.

Regardless, he murmured “Christo,” almost conversationally, staring up at the girl and trying his damnedest not to look up her skirt.

She canted her head, planted hands on tilted hips. Blinked. Each finger wore a different ring and her nose was pierced by a tiny silver loop. “Nope, sorry. Eddie.”

“ _You’re_ Eddie?” Dean draped shackled arms across his knees. This was so much better than dealing with some Mafioso type or thug or wendigo or whatever. His smile turned to honey, eyes hooded, and he shifted his ass causing the beanbag to make a soft susurrus that was almost embarrassing. “You don’t look like an Eddie.”

“Huh, I don’t?” The blonde—blondes were a handful, Dean thought of Jess, of Meg, of Jo, of Marilyn Monroe—the blonde meandered to the coffee table that held all their weapons. Picked up Dean’s wallet and rifled through the contents, a handful of bills, too many plastic cards to count, each with a different name. “Well, to be fair, you don’t look like a…Ted Nugent. Or Sheriff Eric Cartman. And you certainly don’t look like Agent Robert Plant.” One by one she tossed the cards to the floor at Dean’s feet, useless, disregarded, little rectangles of fraud. “Better give me your name or I’ll think of something to call you. Like Justin Timberlake.”

Dean sighed slowly, gave her the facial equivalent of shrug. Futile to fabricate a story at this point, best to keep to simple truths and move the conversation in an ever-changing direction. “Touché. Dean. It’s Dean. Turn-about being fair play and all, everyone else got names?”

The blonde, Eddie, hummed. And the Brit might’ve lifted his chin a tad but no one else volunteered introductions. Figured.

Across the room, Sam took that pause as an opportunity to rustle in his sleep, mumbling, dreaming, fingers twitching. Chasing bunnies. Hair shifted from his forehead and Dean caught sight of an enormous purpling goose-egg, jaundiced at the very center, the point of impact. Without considering balance or company, immediately irked by Sam’s injury, Dean tried to stand up, thigh muscles rocketing and expletives hissing out on his breath. He needed to see Sam’s pupils, check for ear bleeding and blurred vision. No more Mr. Nice Victim.

“What did you do to my br—” He caught himself and bit off the word and almost the tip of his tongue. At the same moment Eight Fingers pressed a palm, flat and stern, to the top of Dean’s head, planting him firmly back on the beanbag. Without ceremony.

“Your girlfriend?” The wild-haired guy volunteered, exhaling another penlight stream of smoke.

Dean’s eyes thinned and got deadly mean. _Fucking stoner, I’ll shove that joint so far up your asshole you’ll taste it in the back of your throat._

“No. _Brother_ ,” Eddie said, and Dean’s head snapped around, lips pressed. “Yeah, same jack-ass stubborn jaw. I noticed.”

“We didn’t do that!” Little Simon was quick to squeak, eyes wide and finger pointing at Sam’s contusion. He seemed to know to be wary of Dean’s temper and ability to wreak serious vengeance when incensed. _Good call, kid._ “Jolly Green did that to himself! When he fell on the bedpost. I swear!”

“How ‘bout waking him up, then?” Dean couldn’t keep the snarl out of his voice. He’d murder them all, human or no, if Sam had anything more than a migraine.

Eight Fingers stepped around, interjecting himself between Dean and Eddie. He was spoiling for a fight; it was all over his face. Nervous energy, coiled-spring muscles and knotted fists, a half-grin without humor but all kinds of eager. “Watch yourself, _friend_. You’re not in any position to be making demands.”

“I don’t care about positions, you shit bag,” Dean spit.

“WAIT.” The Brit approached what was quickly becoming a Bad Situation, palms out in a gesture of stiff calm, somehow managing to be authoritative and anxious all at once. “Wait, Danny. He might have a position if that one’s name is Sam.” A quirked nose to Jolly Green.

Much information to process, Dean furrowed. Eight Fingers was Danny. The Brit knew more than he was letting on, knew who they were, and as evidenced by Eddie’s sudden lifting of brows, she did not. Dean wasn’t quite certain where she fit into the hierarchy of this rabble anyhow. Now it was more confused than ever. And Sam might be bleeding into that big brain of his and here they were, bickering about who had the better position, for Christ’s sake.

“Yeah, dammit, that’s Sam. I’m Dean. Next time we’ll wear our name tags. Now wake him the fuck up already.”

Eddie gave The Brit a pointed glare, her dark eyes wounded, cheeks blooming roses. He lost a bit of his authority and dodged away, pulling back to let her pass on her way to Sam, who had rolled to an awkward balance on one hip, lips parted through which a whistle of breath sawed back and forth, back and forth, chest swelling in and out. His shoulders were taut from the pinned angle of his arms. Did not look comfortable yet still he slept. Never mind the noise and rock hard floor.

Crouching by Sam’s head, Eddie tipped forward and from Dean’s vantage point, he got a perfect shot of her perfect ass in perfectly translucent pink panties. He shouldn’t have gotten a rise out of this and yet, despite his simmering rage and fearful concern, he couldn’t help but secret that image away in his spank bank. Call it making lemonade out of life’s lemons.

Much to Dean’s continued chagrin, she set a lingering kiss on Sammy’s lips. At first Sam didn’t seem to notice, insensible and all. Then the jackass kissed her back. He wasn’t even conscious and he was responding, smile all dimpling up and kitteny growl deep in his throat. Incredible.

Dean blinked slowly. “Why didn’t I get that rise-n-shine treatment?”

“Hey, man, I kissed you…” This, coming from the guy with the crazy hair and marijuana cigarette.

And Dean nearly choked. “Great. I need to gargle now.”

Sam’s lashes flickered. Eddie lifted her mouth a few scant inches, whispering breath across Sam’s face, a gentle sigh full of life and body heat and sweet daydreams, Dean imagined. There was something bizarrely fairy-talesque about the ritual which did not mesh with his notion of what witches were or how they worked or even what they smelled like. He wanted to keep his anger well-stoked but it was intermittent like a guttering candle, quickly heading towards extinction. But that didn’t mean he trusted them any better.

“Are you Sam?” Eddie asked, a lock of blonde falling forward to brush Sam’s cheek.

Sam, never being one to do things halfway, was wide awake in a burst as his eyes snapped open, struggling to sit up so fast he pegged Eddie on the cheekbone with his substantial forehead, specifically the eggplant-colored knot on his substantial forehead. He went from out cold to livid to wailing in the course of thirty seconds.

“Sam!” Dean roared.

Danny stomped forward and caught Eddie before she fell, knocked off her balance and eyes blinking fast through watery tears. Had to hurt. Sam’s noggin was big, hard and stubborn.

Somehow, Sam had managed to lumber to his feet and was threatening to crash into walls, tables, people, whatever stood between him and his momentum, burdened by gravity and no arms to catch his fall. This was going to get dangerous fast, what with Sam careening through the room like a crazed bull cutting through the streets of Pamplona. His face was wild with pain, confusion, and a fair measure of lethal irritation. He rocked shoulders, tendons in his neck stretched to sharp cords as he pulled at the constraints. The ropes were more than likely designed to secure plants to garden lattice because they gave way with a snap.

Before he could be stopped, Dean backpedaled away from the action, into safety, until he hit a wall and used that to slide up to a stand. He wasted no time in grabbing a gun off the coffee table, released the safety. Yeah, so it was Sam’s gun but any port in a storm. Simon may have screamed. Danny had his hands full of blonde, and the stoner wore this blank look of dull surprise and hadn’t moved an inch throughout the whole fracas except to drop his joint. _This is your brain on drugs, folks,_ Dean said to himself with some small crumb of pleasure.

“Sammy! Let’s go!” He boomed. They should never have handcuffed Dean in the front; now he had a warm gun and was happy to blow anyone’s brains out who didn’t wear the name Winchester. Pretty pink panties protected nobody, now.

“Oh, bloody hell, stop…stop!” So, one last party not heard from, The Brit. He ran to the center of the room and waved hands frantically, voice pitched easily an octave higher than it had been five minutes ago. His stiff upper lip was all but gone, brows angled in shock at this horrendous comedy of errors. “No one do anything rash – ” he sputtered “– I mean _more_ rash. These are the Winchesters! Sylvie…Sylvie mentioned these two! Please, please…”

The room suddenly got very, very quiet. Except for Simon hyperventilating in the corner.

“Please,” The Brit continued, pleading towards Dean, “…hear us out.”


	5. Chapter 5

  


Sam swayed, feeling not unlike a drunken stork, all spindly and top-heavy and disoriented and damn, but his skull hurt and for just a heartbeat he thought he might hurl. He dragged a hand across his forehead to confirm, yes, there was a welt that put boulders to shame and it was evidently the source of much of his brain-scramble. Much, but not all.

“Sammy! Let’s go!”

Dean’s bark. It cut straight and true and Sam snapped to attention, becoming aware of something wheezing and warm at the small of his back. Like a dog or…a little guy with purple hair? What? Sam had wedged some kid between himself and a wall and the kid was making like a tuneless squeezebox, leaking oxygen only to gasp it back in.

Sam murmured an insincere apology and shoved off the kid, towards Dean.

“Gun, Sam, and the rest of the shit.” Dean gave a quick twitch of his head to a coffee table, upon which was spread the contents of their collective pockets. Dean’s level stare never strayed from the man in the center of the room. A man whose hands were up and quivering and gesturing in the universal symbol of ‘Don’t shoot!’

Taking immediate stock of the situation, Sam counted heads, made a brief note of the room’s layout, then hurriedly grabbed knives, gun, car keys and his small flask of holy water. Screw the rest; the wallets had been disemboweled and they could always make more IDs. He took up position at Dean’s left shoulder.

The man at the business end of Dean’s gun stammered, eyes panicked and open so wide they showed more white than blue. “Oh, bloody hell, stop! No one do anything rash – ” he said in clipped, British patois “ – I mean _more_ rash. These are the Winchesters. Sylvie…Sylvie mentioned these two. Please, please…”

Sam didn’t need to say a word. He saw Dean’s shoulders tighten at the mention of ‘Winchester’ and ‘Sylvie.’ Stuffing everything but the gun in his coat, Sam readied to shoot if anyone so much as picked their nose the wrong way. He had to wonder at the pink fuzz on Dean’s wrists but that was blackmail for a later date.

“Please,” the man continued, beseeching Dean, “…hear us out.”

“All right. You have thirty seconds. Make it work.”

“You watch _Project Runway_?” The girl, the lone girl in the room, peeked from around a wiry, stiletto-faced man and squinted. Her cheek was angry and swollen from contact with Sam’s cranium. And hey, didn’t she try to kiss him a few seconds ago? Sam found more questions than answers showing up on his radar and this did nothing to improve either his headache or his mood.

Dean blinked. “What? No! What is a Project Runway? I don’t…,” he swore under his breath and directed the barrel of the gun with renewed sobriety at the surrendering man. “Someone better start talking and making sense or me and my brother here? We’re leaving. And if I’ve gotta pop a cap in your asses to accomplish that, well then, so be it.”

The girl carefully sidled up to the man dealing with Dean, all the while trailed by the wiry one. Her doe-eyed gaze was trained on the gun, hands held open and demonstratively empty. “Julian. You know these guys?” She tucked a ribbon of unkempt blonde hair behind one ear, revealing at least a dozen piercings riding up the helix, then in a dropped hush, almost a stage whisper, “Why are we keeping secrets, huh?” Her tone was clearly worried, as well it should’ve been, secrets or no. Sam was not feeling particularly compromising at the moment and if Dean wanted to shoot his way out of the situation, he wouldn’t get much of an argument from Sam. All it took was one witch alive and talking to get whatever lead on Sylvie these rats hid. Might be callous, but so were his abraded wrists and the small, throbbing planet between his eyes.

“I’m sorry, I had my suspicions but I wasn’t sure,” ‘Julian’ said softly, urgently. “They had to be hunters; only one occupation carries all these weapons and occult rubbish on their persons and – ”

“And only one hobby fucks with magic and hangs in a pack to work rituals: witch,” Sam groused, patience well and truly frayed.

“Go get ‘em, tiger,” Dean said over his shoulder.

The girl’s expression flashed from fearful concern to indignation, echoed by her posture and a single unwise step forward. “We’re no more witches than you two are glorified exterminators.”

Which confirmed to Sam, with no small amount of satisfaction, this was indeed a coven if not the one Bobby had mentioned.

The wiry man grabbed her arm to hold her back. He was missing several digits, Sam observed before mumbling, “Wait, _Eddie __is a…?”_

“S’what I said,” Dean finished the thought.

Eddie bristled. “Misogynists.”

The Winchesters bristled back, en masse, both guns turning on Eddie like accusatory fingers. Sam wasn’t altogether certain Dean knew the meaning of the word but he certainly knew the intention.

“People! Do I have to make you hold hands until you behave?! I’ll turn this car around!” Julian shouted, his face flushing, dark stains under the armpits of his shirt as he lifted his hands again, flailing. “Christ on a cracker, can we just settle down and _talk_? For Sylvie’s sake?”

This seemed to do it. Sam exhaled hard, his annoyance giving way to something a touch more conciliatory. At first blush, both parties appeared to want the same thing, to discuss Sylvie. It was feasible, however remotely, that these witches were more than met the eye. Or perhaps less. Less evil, less self-absorbed, less inclined to strangle rabbits and pray to their dark lords for a miracle cure for erectile dysfunction, or whatever the hell they did. Eddie pursed her lips and folded arms across her chest and Hello Kitty t-shirt. Dean lowered his, or rather Sam’s, gun and said, “So talk, already.”

The man spoke quickly, a jumble of words, periodically gesticulating for emphasis. “My name is Julian Grosvenor. This is Eddie McGuffin,” pointing to the girl, “and Danny Black.” The finger-impaired man nodded sternly and threw an arm over Eddie’s shoulder. Ownership, Sam guessed. “The violet-coiffed sprog is Simon and with him, Benecio,” pointing again, to the last pair in the room. Simon had finally stopped wheezing with the ministrations of a swarthy man sporting far too much dark, crazy hair. He was rubbing Simon’s back and talking to him in smooth, calm tones as though the kid was some fragile baby animal that might expire if breathed upon heavily.

Eddie snuck out from under Danny’s security and pulled something shiny and jangly from the pocket of her skirt. Keys. She watched Dean sidelong as the handcuffs sprung free. Murmured “Good will gesture,” before returning to Danny’s side. Sam couldn’t help noticing, because it was difficult not to, that she was braless and had at least one, possibly both, nipples pierced. _Eeesh, I’m gonna have to watch Dean around this one, just in case something else gets sprung._

“Yes,” Julian said, “we weave spells. The whole will-working and ritual rigmarole. But we’re not witches, per se. We prefer to be called magi.”

Dean rubbed at his wrists, turned to swap guns with Sam. Dean was fussy about his favorite things. Cars and guns. And girls, but not fussy enough about those, in Sam’s estimation. “What, like the ‘Three Wise Men’ magi?”

“Yeah, just like that,” Eddie shot back, but not without an almost-smile. “The word _witch_ has a real negative connotation. And we don’t work the bad mojo. That’s not our thing. We’re all about white magic.”

“Uh-huh. Sure you are.”

“Truth. That hexbag you found in Sylvie’s room? That was mine. But we tweaked it. Gave it an upgrade. It didn’t cause a curse; it was simply a burglar alarm. That’s how we knew you were there.”

“And the paper with the sigil?” Sam asked. His anger was ebbing in favor of interest so he decided a little reciprocity was in order. Let them spill the beans. Maybe if he put his gun away, at least tucked it at the small of his back, these so-called magi would be more trusting and forthcoming with information. And maybe he could score an aspirin or three. The place reeked of pot; he might even risk a Percocet if they had one lying around. Insomnia and growing pains at Stanford, not to mention any number of old wounds from ‘hunting accidents’, left Sam occasionally agreeable to better living through chemistry.

A chortle rolled from the back of the room. The hairy man, Benecio. His laughter was as relaxed as his slouch, an effortless, slurred-together mash of syllables. Didn’t act like, five minutes ago he could’ve found a bullet in his brain. “Dude, we were lucky with that one. Didn’t expect to catch you both in range. And you guys are _not_ flyweights. Glad we didn’t have to haul your asses that far. Throw my back out. Harsh.”

Dean seemed to consider this, brows unfurling, easing up. But his gun stayed curled in his fist. “So how did Sylvie get tangled up in your shit?”

The room was quiet for a step, nothing but faint music from another part of the house. It felt, to Sam, like this motley crew didn’t know quite where to begin; they stared at their feet or exchanged loaded glances or just stood there, slack-jawed. Simon spoke up, oddly the bravest of the bunch, or most willing to be vulnerable.

“There were more of us. Half again, more. But they’re gone. Taken. Sylvie agreed to help. She’s awesome.”

Julian nodded, lowered his hands, picked up where Simon left off. Elder spokesman? Figurehead? “She must’ve come to town, having heard about strange disappearances. Not the first hunter to tie us to weird goings-on, I’m afraid.”

“Getting to be a bad fucking habit,” Danny said, churlish enough to make it clear he didn’t appreciate hunters, as a matter of course.

“Sad, but true and irrelevant to our present dilemma. I think. I hope.” There was a flicker in Julian’s glance towards the brothers Winchester, something that read as thinly veiled fear, like he shared Danny’s opinion but in a less pit-bull fashion. More of a high-strung-show-dog-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks vibe. “She’s been working with us for a couple of weeks now. And we’d been making headway. Local psychics are jibber-jabbering about something underneath Chinatown but what? They can’t say. Can’t, or won’t. They’re scared. Petrified to go there. Then Eddie gets this call from Sylvie two days ago.”

“I didn’t have my phone on me; it went to voicemail. Here.” Eddie sounded truly contrite as she pulled a phone from her back pocket, hit buttons, and Sylvie’s voice issued into the uncomfortable space between magi and hunters, tinny but terrified, distorted by the cell phone’s tiny system: “Eddie. I’ve been made. Blown. You gotta send help. Fisherman’s Wharf. Hurry, please…hurry.”

Sam’s stomach knotted and he knew, just knew, Dean’s did too, if not more so. He’d never heard Sylvie sound that way, small and winded and desperate. Sam might’ve been the baby of the family, but Sylvie was the closest thing he had to a little sister. He wanted her safe and sound and drinking cheap beer with them at Bobby’s and listening to the latest cut from The Flaming Lips. He wanted her alive. “You guys went to the Wharf?” Even Sam didn’t like the uneasy edge to his own voice.

Julian nodded. “Three innocent bystanders were murdered at the Information Office. Sliced to bits. Security tapes stolen, according to the tellie. By the time we got down there, the place was crawling with police. Wasn’t much we could do. No sign of Sylvie. And our attempts at scrying for her haven’t gotten anywhere.”

Dean shifted his weight, lifted the gun to rest back on his shoulder. “Scrying, huh? Dandy.”

“We don’t use blood,” Eddie was quick to clarify. If Julian was the talking head of the group, Eddie must’ve been their technical consultant. She did the legwork, answered all the questions about how they did what they did and was willing to talk about it. Sam made a note to pick her brain later, opportunity willing. “We use sangria. Go ahead, laugh, but we make it work. Though there _are_ ways to avoid a scrye, like this.” Eddie flipped her hand over, palm up, to reveal a small tattoo on the inner wrist. A closed eye with some sort of sigil on the lid; Sam couldn’t tell from this distance what it was, exactly. Another bit of mystery to unravel. “They have to be pretty specific and can get weird and complicated sometimes. This ink is an ancient formula; there’re only a couple of artists in the city who know how to use it. That’s one way to hide. Or…um…the person you’re looking for isn’t on this plane anymore.”

“You mean dead?” Dean said stiffly, clearly sharing Sam’s unease.

“We truly hope not. I tried to talk Sylvie into getting one but…” Julian shook his head and rubbed a finger lightly over his own wrist and the matching tattoo there. “I just wish she’d trusted us more. Trusted me.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not gonna happen anytime soon. No offense.”

“I get that. Nor are we keen to work with you dogmatic, vigilante sorts. No offense.”

_Huh. Mr. Fish ‘n Chips might’ve sounded a wee spot testy,_ Sam thought. He got the vague impression Julian liked Sylvie in a genuine way, not just using her as a means to an end, which was easy to do because Sylvie was a butterfly like that. Pretty and fluttery and you just wanted to hold her in your palm and keep her safe. It was one of her weapons. Sam decided to keep that little nugget of intuition to himself. He didn’t need Dean getting all Alpha Male on Julian. They needed to work together.

“Look, trust or no, I think it would be advantageous for us to cooperate,” Sam said quickly, fancying himself the voice of reason at this particular moment. He turned to Dean, lowering his voice for his brother alone. “It’s getting late, Dean. How ‘bout you and I stop back at the Red Vic and dig through the stuff Sylvie collected. Then we can come back here tomorrow morning and cook up a plan of action. All right?”

Julian unruffled his feathers and sighed heavily, nodding.

Dean huffed and finally sheathed his gun.

“All right.” Sam grabbed Dean’s arm and spun him down a short hallway that led to the front. The house, an old Victorian from the looks of the woodwork, was almost shotgun in design; it wasn’t much of a leap to assume he was heading in the right direction. Dean jerked his arm away with a mumbled “bitch” but followed. He kept glancing back, though it wasn’t likely this cockeyed commune would start lobbing daggers at their backs or even throw spells. Spells took time and preparation. And animosity, as a rule. They just didn’t strike Sam as a particularly hostile bunch, with the exception, perhaps, of the guy missing fingers. What did you call a collection of magi, anyway? Coven wasn’t quite right. A muster of magi? Sure, why not. That’s what they called peacocks.

The brothers pushed out through the heavy wooden front door to a cold, clear night. Turns out, they weren’t far from the car, the Red Vic, or the Haight in general. Sam drew an enormous breath. His melon still ached and he wanted an icepack something fierce. Or a stupid aspirin, was that too much to ask? He gingerly touched his forehead and loped down the steep steps to Haight-Ashbury’s dirty, congested sidewalks.

“Well isn’t this just the shit,” Dean grumbled, falling into step as they headed for the Impala.


	6. Chapter 6

  


The Impala was untouched, right where they left it, tucked into a parallel parking spot that ran up a hill and demanded the use of emergency brakes. Dean paused and leaned on the front fender, folding arms across his chest like armor, and Sam shoved his hands in the pockets of his own jeans, his particular form of protection to seem less tall, less obvious. Familiar habits for the both of them.

“Freaks,” Dean said sourly, breath steaming, the cold chewing through his leather coat. His dad’s leather coat. Sam didn’t respond except to pucker brows and frown slightly. “So, what? You think we can trust them? Seriously, Sammy?”

“Sam. And no, I didn’t say that. But they were working with Sylvie and either they can help us, or they had a hand in her disappearance. Whichever way, we’re stuck with them, freakishness, notwithstanding.” The last few words were said sotto voce. Dean realized he had inadvertently poked one of Sam’s psychological bruises. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that and wasn’t in the mood for a chick flick moment, so Sam would just have to man up and deal for the time being.

Fact was, Dean’s head still felt half-stuck in mud and he craved shuteye, but they had to sift through Sylvie’s crap and find a place to crash for the night before anything else. Might just stay in her room, if he could get used to the musty stink of old furniture and hippie. “All right, fine, what time is it?”

“Almost midnight.”

“Awesome. Need anything from the car?”

“Yeah, my laptop. And one of those chemical ice packs.”

Dean rocked off the Impala and opened the trunk, tossed Sam a small plastic package and a big canvas rectangle, the latter protecting the one thing Sam valued of all his possessions: the computer. Dean had the car, his amulet, a fistful of cherished old cassette tapes, Dad’s leather coat, the best damned sawed-off in all of hunterdom, so many comfort items that kept him grounded and secure and well-oiled. Sam had a goddamned machine. Not that it wasn’t handy and all but really? So…unattached.

“You buying all that magi malarkey?” Dean asked, looking over and up. Sam had cracked the icepack and was busy pressing it to his forehead and wincing. They threaded through the colorfully congested weekend sidewalks, dodging tourists, homeless, and locals alike. It made Dean squirrelly with claustrophobia, to push through people just to get from Point A to Point B. The only time he liked doing that was at a bar with a girl and a beer, sometimes hot wings, as the end game.

Sam shrugged, shouldered around some guy with a dirty mohawk and a fistful of flyers hawking a garage band calling themselves the The Gangcookies. “Dunno. I suppose it’s possible. Sylvie isn’t a fool, Dean. If she thought they were dangerous, she wouldn’t be working with them, right? Besides, I think the British guy liked her. They might’ve been…” Sam made a gesture that was distinctly un-Sammish and he grinned while he did it.

_Mmmhmm. I see how it is._ Sam was just pushing Dean’s buttons for the ‘freak’ comment and could suffer an elbow to the kidney for it. Instead, Dean got the hard side of the laptop and decided further retribution was a bad idea. “Yeah, but witches, Sam? The shit they do, I don’t know. The power to cast spells comes from a source, and that source ain’t Candyland. It’s infernal. You know it and I know it. Just because the chick can spin it to look all lollypops and Barbie shoes doesn’t mean it’s healthy.”

Sam opened the door to the Red Vic, held it for Dean to pass first with an off-handed “Age before beauty” comment which earned him a humorless “Ha ha” in return. “I’m not disagreeing, Dean, just saying we have to give them the benefit of the doubt with a grain of salt until we know better.” Sam’s hands wagged back and forth with the cadence of the clichés, a ‘yadda yadda yadda’ sort of gesture.

Dean grunted, rolled his eyes. _Voice of reason, my ass._ A couple dozen people had crowded into the cramped, warm café, clustered around a corner stage hosting some sort of performance, an open mic night according to the dry-erase sign tacked to one wall. A guitarist wearing a vest that looked like one of those crocheted plant hangers your grandma used to make caterwauled above light chatter, sounding totally unlike Bob Dylan despite song selection. Serendipity, because it allowed for the boys to slip upstairs virtually unnoticed.

Sylvie’s room sat, still unlocked, still a mess, still sans Sylvie. She must’ve paid for a chunk of time up front and requested privacy, which was standard operating procedure for a hunter. Dean secured the lock behind them, however, and sure as hell wasn’t going to pick up any scraps of paper slipped under the door. Sam righted the toppled bedside lamp; it was burning like a trooper and had the oddly colored glow of an environmentally friendly bulb. They set to work, falling back on time-worn habits, Sam taking the reading and Dean doing the digging. They’d already made a cursory scope of the room, pre-sleeping spell, so it was time to dig deeper, start turning over furniture and examining the fine print.

Sam methodically plucked thumbtacks from the makeshift redwood corkboard, stacking various types of media into their own separate piles as was his inclination. Sam could categorize and tabulate and correlate like nobody’s business, which was a very good thing because it drove Dean effin’ crazy. Dean would far rather dig through pajama drawers and upend shoeboxes. There was something innately satisfying about making a mess in pursuit of the truth. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, right? Dean wasn’t finding much, though, despite his best efforts: an empty bottle of Jack; most of Sylvie’s weaponry which was disconcerting because she seldom left home without them; an old t-shirt from J & L Harley Davidson, Sioux Falls, SD; $100 in cash, thank God because they’d left their funds at the magi’s; and a fistful of photographs, tucked beneath a loose flap of fabric in a duffel bag.

“Hey. Sammy. Look at this.” Dean kneed across the bed and stood up beside Sam, shoulder to almost shoulder, shuffling through a half-dozen or so yellowed, dog-eared photos. One by one he passed them over. Bobby, with Sylvie hugging him hard in spite of the good-natured grimace on Bobby’s face, shadowed by his omnipresent ballcap, standing in front of the salvage yard, beers in hand. Another picture, Sylvie, cheesing before a huge glorious hole in the earth so wide the atmosphere made its farthest rim hazy with distance. There might’ve been the tip of a burro’s ear in the shot.

“I’ll be damned,” Sam murmured, smiling over the image. “She made it to the Grand Canyon before you did. You lost that bet, Dean.”

“I sure did,” Dean said, absently wondering who was holding the camera.

A picture of someone’s dog. Another of someone’s toddler with the same dog licking the kid’s icing-smeared cheeks. Dean had no idea who they were. Family, maybe? A niece? Then a very familiar face. His own. With Sam. He remembered that Saturday in sepia shades and hazy heat-waves, one Indian summer they went to the Country Apple Orchard not far from Bobby’s place to pick Honey Crisps or some particular apple variety that Sylvie swore was the very best ever, no lie. They were both grinning like fools, chunks of apple wedged in their mouths and arms slung over each other’s shoulders. Seconds after Sylvie had snapped the pic, Dean had shoved Sam backwards over a hay bale but Sam’s stupid long leg flipped up and caught Dean under the chin with the heel of his boot and he very nearly bit his tongue clean off. They’d all laughed through the blood because blood didn’t bother them any more, and completely terrified a church group that was there on tour but which just made it all the funnier.

“God, I hope we find her,” Sam said softly.

“Yeah, me too.” Dean sat heavily on the edge of the bed, tossing the photos aside and pinching the bridge of his nose. “You got anything?”

“Dunno. Whole lot of stuff that doesn’t seem particularly related. Clippings of the missing women, gone in the last six months but we knew that. Should probably ask the magi if they were all members of the, uh, coven or whatever. Postcard from Chinatown, nothing on the back. Bunch of pamphlets from psychics, some of them Sylvie already noted were scams. A business card from a tattoo parlor. ‘Gypsy Ink.’ Maybe we can check that out tomorrow. Some band fliers. But that’s about it.” Sam exhaled and dropped down next to Dean. “Guess I’ll hit the social networking sites, see if any of the women had something else in common.”

“Guess I’ll watch TV…” Dean shrugged out of his coat and started pawing around in the covers for the channel selector. Didn’t see one, but then upon closer inspection, nor did he see a television. His shoulders sagged. “Are you kidding me? There’s no TV! Sonofabitch, you’d think we were in the middle of a friggin’ jungle or – ”

Sam thumbed towards the floor-to-ceiling wallpaper redwoods.

“Ah, shuddup,” Dean said, grabbing his coat again. “Fine. I’m going to that 24-hour market we passed. Get a six-pack. You want something?”

“Grab me a Yoohoo?”

“A…Yoohoo.”

Sam grinned and Dean knew Sam just wanted to force him to ask the cashier for something brainless like that watery chocolate swill, which Sam really did seem to like for some God-awful reason. “Lock the door, Samantha.” And he left.

The hootenanny was breaking up as Dean drifted outside. Pedestrian traffic had thinned considerably; this wasn’t the shiniest section of town at night, despite the peace signs and psychedelia. It was still the place where indigents gathered, huddled in the gloom of closed storefronts with their dogs and drugs and dreams. Crouched bodies in dirty blankets sat under streetlights like fallen fruit, rotting on the ground.

Dean squared his shoulders, narrowed his gaze. He’d perfected a “Don’t fuck with me” demeanor and it served him well, tall and imposing next to anyone but Sam. He kept the pace brisk, hands free from his pockets in case he needed to use them to, oh, hit something. Half an hour ago he could’ve slept; now, he was over-tired and guttering, bug-zapper wired with worry and the cold.

“Spare a dollar, friend?” The shadows released a weathered voice and it sounded so dry, so perishable, Dean simply had to slow his gait and look. A hand, dirt caked in every crease, extended spidery, shuddering fingers. The guy wasn’t old, wasn’t as old as Dean expected. Hard to tell because life had not been kind. His eye sockets were too deep to read color, cheekbones sharp as razors. Dark, dirty hair jutted every which way, clothing an indeterminate gray. Beyond that, details were lost. An empty beer can rolled away from his feet when he shifted. “Just one dollar?”

Dean didn’t stop. He had Sylvie’s $100 in his pocket and that was the entirety of their funds until he and Sam figured out something else or retrieved their cards and wallets. And this guy was just going to drink it away; he wasn’t shooting for a well-balanced meal or a pint of milk or anything smart. Dean kept walking. A dozen steps later, however, he turned around and came back. Gave the guy ten bucks. “Get the good stuff, all right?”

The shadow slipped the bill from Dean’s fingers, wadded it up close. “Yeah, man, thanks. Thanks.”

_That could’ve been me,_ Dean thought, a weariness settling in his bones. If not for John Winchester’s insistence the boys learn how to grift, master the art of credit card fraud and flickering puppyish eyes at soft women. Dean never had a problem with sticky fingers or breaking and entering. Sam did, but made up for it by feigning a good drunk, disguising the fact his pool and dart games were killer. They flew beneath the radar and kept their heads above water, if just barely. And as long as they had the Impala, they were never homeless.

Quite suddenly, Dean missed his father enough to bring on the stinging waters. It hit him out of the blue sometimes, that echoing void, all the loaded questions left fallow in the considerable gouge of John’s passing. Dean felt orphaned, in more than the literal sense. Cut loose and adrift, too much sail and not enough anchor, his only harbor a big black car and Sam. Sam, who needed Dean to be his savior. No pressure there. Dean paused, briefly pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes. _Christ, walk it off, Winchester. You’ve got beer and Yoohoo to procure. Don’t be such a girl._

The tears receded as quickly as they’d risen. Just tired, he reasoned wanly. Having pulled himself together, Dean cornered into a building labeled ‘Superette’ which touted not just groceries, but champagne and coffee beans as well. Dean squinted through the blinding florescence, bee-lining for beer. He splurged on Corona because he felt justified after having visited charity upon the world in the form of a ten-dollar bill left in the hands of a bum.

The bum was gone when Dean passed by again. Good.

He tried not to stomp up the groaning wooden staircase, figuring many of the Red Vic’s guests were heading for The Land of Nod, it being almost 1:30 in the morning and all. Dean rapped softly on the Redwood Room plaque, whispered Sam’s name. Nothing. _Crap._ Dean tried the knob and it opened easily. _Double Crap._ Dean’s heart stuttered as the door drifted open, hinges whining…until he heard soft snores.

Sam forgot to lock up, and it was a good thing too because the dumbass was fast asleep and Dean didn’t have a key or his picks. He slipped inside, shutting and, dammit, _locking_ the door behind.

Dean set the grocery bag on a dresser, displacing several bottles of Sylvie’s girlie tonics, and shuddered out of his coat, toeing off boots, leaving both in a pile on the floor. He wasn’t even thirsty anymore but cracked open a beer because it was there. Sam rolled over and Dean had to hustle to grab the laptop before it thudded off the bed. He closed the thing and set it beside the bag.

Sam’s forehead was one big bruise; the kid was gonna have the mother of all headaches in the morning and Dean wasn’t going to hear the end of it until well after lunch and they got busy and Sam forgot about it in lieu of the case. Kid, ha. Sam’s stocking feet hung off the end of the bed and his hands were as big as catcher’s mitts, curled to his chest in loose fists. Some kid. But no matter how much a man he became, Sam would always be Dean’s kid brother. _Damn straight. You just remember that, Sammy, if things go south. If the shit Dad said makes any kind of sense, hits any kind of fan. You remember I’m your older brother and I have to make the hard decisions for us. And you owe me._ Dean swiped the sweating bottle across his brow and settled into bed next to Sam. Watched for a few moments until his lids grew heavy and the beer turned warm. _You owe me, Sam._ But he didn’t really mean it.

 

 

Dean’s first thought was a big one: earthquake. The mattress was trembling, no, make that jolting, and things were crashing, blankets being tugged off the bed to the floor, a voice hissing “oh God” over and over like one long word. Pre-dawn gave the room a dead, dim, colorless quality that made it difficult to discern shadow from substance but something huge was rocking in the corner. Dean slammed around the bedside table, floundering for a lamp, his other hand already clutching cold metal beneath the pillow. The gloom evaporated with the pull of a chain-cord and Dean squinted, disoriented.

“Sam?!”

“Oh God oh God oh God, Dean, God – ” Sam had palms pressed flat to either wall, eyes rabid and darting, following motion Dean couldn’t see. A thin trickle of red seeped from a split in his lip, sweat soaked t-shirt half-up his torso in disarray as Sam slid down the corner.

Dean hauled across the bed, nearly snarled in sheets. “Sammy, WAKE UP. It’s a dream, just a dream.” He grasped Sam’s biceps, pulled him up, even shook him because that’s what you did, right? He suddenly found himself very, very awake.

“So much blood!” Sam’s fever-bright gaze couldn’t steady on Dean’s face; it darted frantically under a forehead haggard with stress and knowing Sam’s past visions, pain. “There’s so much blood!”

“No, Sammy, you bit your lip. It’s cool, there’s not that much blood.” Dean dodged his face to put it right in front of Sam’s sights, forcing his brother to see him instead of whatever Hell was playing in the horror movie of Sam’s mind.

It seemed to work. Sam’s lids fluttered. His blown pupils struggled into cross-eyed focus, Dean only inches from his nose, and his breathing calmed.

“You don’t get it, Dean; it was too real and too red and I saw it with eyes open. No dream.” Sam wrenched from Dean’s grip, shoved past. He grabbed the first thing he could find to write on, the postcard from Chinatown, clicked lead into a mechanical pencil that had been left sitting on a stack of newspaper articles. Scribbled furiously.

“God damned visions,” Dean said, craning to see Sam’s masterpiece. Looked like furious scribbles, maybe a flower, if you squinted just so. He hated it when Sam did this. Hated it. Big “H”. God damned visions. “All right. What else did you see?”

Sam rubbed at his forehead, cringing in evident pain. Words came out in a flood, as though terrified he’d forget something the more awake he became. “The blood. That flower. Snake…a snake. But not a real one, I dunno, a cartoon? Like a drawing.” Sam lowered onto the bed but would’ve missed the edge had Dean not pulled him back by the back of his shirt. “And that purple-haired kid, the one from the house. In the blood. Blinding white light. Mouths. Mouths everywhere…”

“You’re not making sense, Sam.”

“I know; I’m sorry. Since when have these things made sense?”

“Since about never.”

Sam looked over and his eyes were liquid over dark smudges, voice a rough mumble. “All I know is the magi? They’re in deep shit.”

Dean’s head drifted to thud against Sam’s shoulder. “I was afraid of that.”


	7. Chapter 7

  


“Are you sure we don’t need the car?” Dean was still fumbling his gun into concealment when Sam hit the sidewalk, pounding off at a hard jog and already panting like he’d just completed a 10-K run.

Panic caught the air and gave it weight. Panic at getting to the magi before Bad Things happened. Panic at the eddying images smeared, in dirty red stains, through Sam’s recent memory. Panic at something he couldn’t tell Dean, could barely tell himself.

“Sam! Shit, wait up.”

“It’s only a couple of blocks. We might not find parking. Don’t have time for the car.” Sam didn’t apologize for his legs being longer than Dean’s. That was life. Like how Dean was effortless with the female of the species and could drink just about anyone under the table. But he didn’t slow his pace. Dean caught up, barely, falling into step and fixing a hot stare at Sam’s left sideburn.

“You’re not gonna have an aneurism or anything, are you?”

“NO, Dean. But you know how these things are; sometimes we get time, sometimes we don’t.” Sam sounded harsher than he intended and cut an apologetic glance sideways. Dean had this expression, part deer-in-the-headlights, part don’t-fuck-with-me.

The premonitions weren’t as straightforward as Sam would like, ever. There had been occasions when they got there too late, others when they had an hour to spare, minutes to spare. Dean knew that. But this…felt different. And maybe that’s why Dean asked about the brain bleed. Maybe he felt it too. Guilt rolled along with the panic tightening in Sam’s belly.

As per usual, the vision was instigating a thought-eating migraine, coming from deep left field and plastering Sam with nausea and a blinding sear inside his frontal lobe. Also typical of the damned things, this one didn’t make a lick of narrative sense, frantic stop-motion shreds that frequently went by too fast to digest, or blinked repeatedly until you wanted to smash your head against a wall to make it all stop, to un-skip the record.

These physical feelings were expected of Sam’s psychic birthday present. Old hat. It was the accompanying emotion that set Sam’s nerves on edge with a trip-wire snare of fear. When he saw, in his mind’s eye, the washes of dark deoxygenated blood, something felt righteous. When the kid with the purple hair screamed, Sam warmed with easy satisfaction. The snake turned, the flower blossomed, maws of every imaginable tooth snapped and bit and jibbered in a language he didn’t know but somehow understood. _He is here he is here he is here._ Something made Sam feel sated and perfectly placed within this foreseen massacre…the precious, missing fragment of a million-piece jigsaw puzzle. No, Dean could not know this.

When they arrived back at the house, which in the brightening haze of dawn revealed itself to be painted an absurd shade of electric blue, there were lights burning in the bowels of the place, probably from the kitchen. Sam barely had time to make note of the exterior last night. The blue paint was peeling, a month’s worth of newspapers piled up on the porch beside a half-dozen empty beer bottles and row after row of over-grown potted plants. Decorative chimes dangled from the eaves, crystalline sounds brushing the wind. A dreamcatcher or two swayed in the mix. Underfoot, a jute doormat ordered, in big block letters, every person crossing its path to “WIPE”, which went wholly ignored by the Winchesters.

Sam knocked loudly, insistently. A large orange tabby appeared inside the sidelight and assessed Sam and Dean with tawny-eyed indifference, licking its chops and flicking its ears and probably mildly amused by the outsiders’ distress. The hallway behind the cat was still empty and dark, not that anyone would have had a chance to answer the door before Sam pounded again.

“Easy, there, Sammy.” Dean was the rare voice of moderation at Sam’s shoulder, an angel with his halo askew. “It’s only —” checked his watch “— the asscrack of dawn. Give ‘em a minute.”

Sam huffed, rolled a shoulder, tried to brush off his anxiety as if it were an inconvenient tickle of spider web. A shadow finally moved at the end of the hall, briefly blocking the light from inside. Taking its own sweet time, a figure shuffled forward and they recognized the disheveled outline of Benicio, the pothead, although Sam suspected the entire house could easily fall under the category of ‘recreational drug users.’ The man squinted as he neared, scratched an arm pit and shooed the cat away. He was barefoot, in sweats and a vintage Queen t-shirt both of which had seen far better days. His face didn’t exactly light up when he saw Sam and Dean but it did ease with recognition. The door opened a crack and the aroma of frying peppers and onions flooded out on a push of warm household air.

“Little early, yeah?”

“Um, yeah. Sorry. Did…did anything weird happen to you guys last night? After we left?” Sam tried not to let the panic creep out in his tone and was failing miserably.

Benecio quirked both bushy brows, knuckled an eye socket blearily. Apparently it’d been a boring, quiet night for the household.

“We need to talk. Please.” Sam almost demanded.

Dean smiled all the way to his molars, patting Sam on the back and making with the nicey-nice. “Eager beaver. Sorry. We just, uh, man that smells good. Can we come in?”

Benicio grinned something quick and uncomplicated, apparently buying Dean’s bull. He swung the door wide and gestured magnanimously. The cat tried to escape but was scooped up and tucked under one arm, grumping despite Benicio’s whispered sweet nothings into its ruff.

“So. You guys didn’t come here for the free breakfast, I’m a’guessin’.” Benicio meandered to the kitchen, Sam and Dean trailing behind. The cat was dropped by its food dish and Benicio continued on to a skillet that sizzled and hissed and popped on the stovetop, coffee drizzling into a carafe on the counter. No one else was awake, just the stoner and the cat and two brothers.

“Nope, can’t say that we did, though I wasn’t lying when I said it smelled good.” Dean sounded perfectly cordial. His eyes scanned the room and Sam saw him lingering over the knife block, back door, cast-iron skillets. All the necessities to pull a hasty retreat, if required. The room was as old and decrepit as the front porch, cabinets rough with umpteen layers of paint over chipped Formica countertops and still more potted plants. Someone in the coven had at least ten green thumbs.

“Huevos rancheros. Plenty to go around. I cook for the house. Sit.” And they did, both with their backs to the wall. Two mugs were slipped from a rack and filled with fresh coffee. Benicio slid one to Dean, black, and the second to Sam along with a pint of half-and-half and a pumpkin-shaped sugar bowl. And one spoon.

In unison, the Winchesters stared at the mugs like the things had somehow grown mouths and begun quoting Shakespeare.

“How did…” Sam began, fingertip prodding the fat spot on his lip where he must’ve bitten it earlier.

Benicio pulled a carton of brown eggs towards the stove, cracked several into a second skillet. “It’s my thing, man. I, like, read people. Intuition or something. See auras. I just had a feeling you took yours black and you took yours light and sweet. Kinda like your women.”

Dean almost spit coffee. “Whoa whoa whoa, what?”

“Sorry, man, did I say that out loud?” Benicio threw Dean a laugh over one shoulder. “Yeah, and your aura? It’s as pink as…as…those crazy colored marshmallow chicks you buy at Easter.”

“Peeps,” Sam supplied, grinning in spite of the busted lip.

“Yeah, that’s the stuff. Peeps.”

Grousing over the rim of his coffee, Dean shot them both with a withering glare. “I do not…DO NOT…have a pink aura. Do not. Nuh-uh. But I bet his is turd yellow.” Dean fixed a pointed finger at Sam, who rolled his eyes and shoveled sugar into one mug. Dean could keep his bacon cheeseburgers; Sam needed a good shot of sugar to feel like himself.

Shifting a gaze from one brother to the other, Benicio blinked slowly. Shrugged. Turned back to his eggs and began assembling breakfast onto three plates. “ ‘Course he has an aura. Everyone does.”

The room fell quiet for a moment except for the noises from frying pans and the cat noshing kibble and a toilet flushing somewhere upstairs. The world was beginning to awaken around them.

Dean gawked, clearly annoyed the question had been left hanging, heavy, in mid-air and stinking of avoidance. “And?”

Even Sam had to admit to some curiosity here. Or not. He might be confusing curiosity with dread which happened a lot these days.

“Gray.” Benicio set plates before his guests, tortillas and eggs and veggies smothered in oceans of salsa. A fistful of silverware was thrown into the middle of the table. Hospitality didn’t have to include ceremony. He was conspicuous in avoiding Sam’s gaze, though, which wasn’t very hospitable. “With, uh, these black squiggles.”

Sam’s expression wilted, bravely trying for nonchalant but just ended up looking transparent and uneasy. He distractedly forked holes in an egg yolk, bleeding it yellow. “What does that mean? I’m all emo?”

A chair scraped out and Benicio sat, scrubbing fingers across the scruff on his chin before settling hands on the table, loosely twined. His fingertips were slightly stained from smoking, and he appeared either thoughtful or half-baked, Sam couldn’t tell for all the pounding in his skull. The stoner locked and held Sam’s gaze, heavy brows quirking. “You really want me discussin’ this now?”

The question made Dean rock back several inches, fork paused partway between huevos rancheros and slack jaw.

Sam felt heat hit his face from the inside out and the migraine ratcheted up a notch. He cleared his throat, pushed back the plate, fearing what little he’d eaten would crawl back up his esophagus and say “Good morning!” to the world.

“Yes. Yeah. Of course. I mean, why wouldn’t I?” _Be cool, Winchester, be cool._

Benicio gave the room a pause, apparently selecting his words with great care. Nope, not stoned, Sam decided. Not even a little. “It’s polluted, man. Best way I can put it. You got shit in your aura.”

Now it was Dean’s turn to roll his eyes. “Shit in your aura. Now I’ve heard it all – ”

“Hey, believe me or not. I don’t make the rules. I just read the signs. That’s how it is with these things, right?” Benicio was still looking conscientiously at Sam and Sam wished he would stop. The center of attention was not where he wanted to be, pinned in the spotlight by whatever crap-ton of bad luck dropped him there. Sam’s ever-expanding repertoire of bad luck. Or fate. Was there even a difference anymore? “You know, man. I know you know.”

Dean dodged his gaze down to his plate, continued shoveling food in his mouth around a scowl. Sam grudgingly had to admire Dean’s cast iron stomach. It took more than doom and gloom and obtuse extrasensory yakkity-smack to kill Dean’s appetite. Sam felt like a fucking princess next to Dean most days and this was one of them.

“I know,” Sam murmured. Time to ‘fess up. “We’re not here for the home cooking. I had a vision last night…this morning. Whatever. I get visions. And they foretell death. I saw Simon die. Happy fun times, huh.”

Benicio humphed, nodded, didn’t shift his stare even when Dean added, in false cheer, “Our very own little deathwatch beetle, Sammy Winchester.”

Sam frowned. “Shut it, Dean.”

“No, don’t.” Quiet words, feminine, edged with something sharp like a razor blade in taffy, issued from the doorway. “Keep talking. This is really, really fascinating. A hunter with psychic abilities. Pot, meet kettle.”

Finally, Benicio stopped staring at Sam and slid back from the table, clattering another plate from the cupboard for Eddie. “Mornin’, sunshine.” He beamed ear to ear as Eddie shuffled into the kitchen, resplendent in wooly pink slippers and a robe that was big and tufted in spots and practically swallowed her up from neck to knees.

Comfort food for the body, Sam reasoned. Not unlike his own favorite shirt, the soft white one with weird, faded red paisley, like it’d been sewn inside out. The last remaining gift he’d received from Jess that wasn’t hopelessly blood-stained or shot up or worn out. He would never throw that one away, no matter how threadbare, so it scored a few points with Sam that Eddie didn’t dispose of clothing just because it wasn’t _au currant_. And he hardly blamed her for being a smidge rancorous with them; Sam was keenly aware of the duplicity of the situation. Hell, he was living it.

Dean, however, didn’t appear impressed in the least. Sam knew that when his brother barely slowed the progress of food to mouth, didn’t bother to swallow before he spoke, gave you a look that droned “Oh, hi, yeah, who were you again?” you were not on Dean’s list of Top Ten Most Impressive People. “Big difference between what _we_ do with our mad skills, sister, and what you people do. We save lives.”

“ _You_ people? Seriously? You don’t have a clue what I do.” Eddie smiled pleasantly enough when she sat down across from Dean, who was busy scalping food from Sam’s abandoned plate and stubbornly refusing to look at her. “Tell me about the vision, Sam.”

Sam cleared his throat and shifted like his ass went numb. “It’s not really cut and dried, these visions. They kinda slur together and don’t make a lot of sense. I saw flowers, like water lilies. No, wait, just one flower. And a sketch of a snake. Blood. Lots of blood. Simon was swimming in the stuff. I think…I think he was being eaten?” Sam pinched fingers to the bridge of his nose, swallowing hard. “There were all these teeth. A flash of white. Then…nothing.” He neglected to reveal his disturbing gratification and smugness brought on by the whole affair; that, to him, was the most terrifying part. And there was nothing anyone else could do about it. This was all Sam’s shit to reconcile.

Eddie hummed contemplatively. “Nothing phallic there, no, not a little.”

Sam’s cheeks colored and Dean snorted.

“You’re certain it was Simon? And he was killed?” Eddie asked.

“Yeah. That much was pretty clear. I really don’t want to see the kid end that way. We can do something about it, I think. I hope. Set things right.” He didn’t mean to sound so desperate, so needy. The room was brightening with the full-on arrival of morning but the sun did nothing to strip Sam of the feeling he was damned and dangerous, circling the drain and liking it. The fact he doubted himself, his ability to be trusted, sat like bile on the back of his tongue. When he looked up, Eddie was watching him with heart-melting brown eyes. Might even have been pooling with deliberate tears. Emotional manipulation notwithstanding, Simon meant something to her, this much was clear. In fact, the way she fraternized with all the magi indicated she was their den mother. In common witchcraft parlance, she might’ve been their high priestess. She had lost many friends in the past six months, or so she’d said, including Sylvie and it must’ve been sitting heavy on her shoulders if, indeed, she had nothing to do with their disappearances. Yes, they had to set things right, even if there were a lot of unanswered questions still clinging to the periphery of Sam’s cloudy theories.

Benicio, on the other hand, was glaring holes in Sam, and not happily. His expression had become almost unbearable, 180 degrees from the affable demeanor he wore not ten minutes ago. Sam could hardly hold the guy’s gaze without his skin crawling, stomach contents edging upwards.

“Can I use your restroom?” Sam was quite certain he looked as green as he felt.

“Sure. It’s upstairs.” Eddie said, tilting her head like a dewy-eyed Golden Retriever which was not, Sam noted with some regret, the most flattering comparison but he wasn’t feeling particularly generous at the moment. He was about to toss his breakfast back onto the table.

Benicio immediately moved from his place by the stove, setting a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “I’ll take him. I need to get ready for work anyway. Daylight’s burnin’. C’mon, Sam.”

Dean followed with his eyes, his expression dark, concerned, worn out. “You okay, Sammy?”

_No, I’m not okay. Nothing about me is okay._ Sam shrugged him off and stood, hands sagging at his sides and shoulders at a telltale slope. He doubted Benicio would do anything aggressive in Dean’s absence, but maybe, just maybe, Sam could pick the empath’s brain and glean something of use from the guy’s intuition. Something hopeful, that didn’t make Sam look like the monster. Make something…anything…okay for once.


	8. Chapter 8

  


Dean drank his coffee angrily, as only Dean could do. Once duly motivated, he made even the most mundane activity a visceral display of calculated emotion. It served him oh so well when he acted the part of federal agent, janitor, priest, or stone-cold killer. Sam won them over with empathy, sometimes contrived, sometimes sincere. Dean worked completely on guile, when he even cared to put forth the effort. And when he didn’t care he slapped up a firm wall of indifference or smart-assedness and went about his merry way.

Eddie seemed to take note of this particular pantomime and watched him with a soft expression, Mother Teresa in a worn, fuzzy bathrobe. Except she wasn’t wearing anything under said robe; Dean was pretty damned sure of that from an errant glimpse of thigh when she sat down across from him.

Dean knew she was working a ruse, too. He wanted her to feel how pissed off he was to be this tired and this awake at such an ungodly hour and this irritated with life, in general, so don’t screw with him, okay? _Pink aura my ass._ And based on her liquid eyes, Eddie wanted Dean to know she pitied his anger and raised him a stack of patience and dedication to her goals that would not be thwarted by any man’s churlish display. Well. At least they knew where each other stood.

The coffee maker sputtered the last of its steam with a machinated cough. Birds had the audacity to yammer from a feeder that hung just beyond the window over the sink. And Dean drummed fingers on the table. The cat, having finished its chow, was on the floor at Dean’s boots, watching him. Blinking. Dean gave the animal a cursory glance, then a stare. Blinking back. The cat didn’t have a tail.

“Your cat doesn’t have a tail,” he said, impressed by his own keen sense of the obvious.

“I know,” Eddie was polishing off her huevos rancheros, clearly not one of those women who wouldn’t eat in front of men. “I needed it for a ritual.”

Dean’s glare snapped up before he could catch himself. Eddie was smiling fiendishly.

“He was born without a tail, stupid. You really do want to think the worst of us, don’t you?” She didn’t sound particularly annoyed with him but the nunnish facade was gone, in favor of a shrewd narrowing of eyes.

“Not everyone. Just you.” And Dean grinned back.

“Nice. Well that settles it, then. You’re coming with me today.” Eddie washed down breakfast with a swig of coffee. Black, Dean observed, illogically annoyed by the way she took her joe.

“The hell I am.” Dean set back in his seat, arms folded over his chest to close off, make his biceps look bigger. Like a dog raising its hackles or a cock fanning its wings before a fight. Still with the mean grin, though.

Eddie leaned forward, pointing at him with her fork. For every bit of distance Dean tried to establish, she countered by getting closer. “Oh, come on. It’s ‘Bring a Hunter to Work Week’ and the girls in the office would love to meet you.”

“Sorry to disappoint, sister – ”

“All right, look, Dean. I’m really tired of this shit.” She dropped her fork to the plate with a clatter that made the cat jerk and wander off, stub twitching. She sighed hard and swiped at loose blonde tendrils. “You and I want the same thing here. We want a friend back. Me? I have a _lot_ of friends I need back. I’ve lost more friends this past year than most people have in an entire lifetime. And I don’t know what happened to any of them.” The sincerity was back but this time in earnest. No play-acting. A flicker of disclosure washed over Eddie’s face and made her look so fearful and young, even though she was likely closer to Dean’s age than Sam’s. Tiny lines gifted by the California sun and recent worry radiated from the edges of her eyes, settled in the corners of her mouth, broke the smooth of her skin in minute fractures. Maybe not so much young, as desperate. Worn. Nearing wit’s end. “Please.”

Dean kicked himself mentally and felt a melt coming on. “Now why do I need to go to work with you?”

“I want you to come with me so I can show you what I do with my spells, my magicks. We won’t be gone long and—” She dodged her gaze down to the coffee, burnt umber the same color as her irises “—I need you to trust me just a little. Just enough for us to work together.”

Unfolding his arms, Dean hoped he didn’t live to regret this. “Sam’s not going to want to leave the kid alone. Vision quest thing and all.”

“Sam can stay here and watch Simon; that would make me feel better anyway.”

“Make _you_ feel better? You have that much faith in us?”

“I had that much faith in Sylvie. And I don’t have a choice about you guys.” She picked at a scar on the table, and Dean noticed for the first time her hands had dirt permanently etched into the knuckles and fingertips, under the nails, embedded in the cuticles. Ah, here was the house’s green thumb. Dean had wondered about Eddie’s particular affinity, since it seemed like these witches were inclined to specialize in one area or another. She must be some sort of herbalist? Hell, someone had to grow all the ceremonial meadowsweet and sage and poison hemlock, he supposed.

“Fine, fine. So where’re we going?”

“I help run a community garden down by Corona Heights. Easy walk from here. Where’re you parked, anyway? I’ve got a driveway off the alley in the back; you might want to pull your car up there. I have to be to work by nine, so I’m gonna grab a shower.” Relief softened her features and she shoved back from the table, Dean looking up just in time to see the robe part a few inches farther. Nope, nothing under, just as he suspected and she didn’t seem the least bit shy about it. Though she did give Dean a discerning stare, a slight wrinkle of nose. “You should grab a shower sometime too. You’re ripe.” Eddie wandered out of the kitchen, followed by the cat, leaving Dean to scowl and fester in his own considerable juices. He couldn’t argue with her; he was ripe. Sam too, no doubt, since they hadn’t had the luxury of a shower since the Mother Lode Motel in Placerville.

“No, _you’re_ ripe.” Muttered under his breath, alone at the table. Where the hell was Sam, anyway? He fall in? Dean dragged himself up and made a brief survey of the room. It looked like every other crunchy granola socially-conscious kitchen, what with its Free Trade whole bean coffee and biodegradable garbage bags and citric-based cleaners. Hell, even the cat food was organic.

Nothing to see here. Dean exited by the back door to check out this supposed parking spot for his baby. The screen door complained mightily, as did the back porch when he set foot on it. The whole house needed serious TLC but the narrow strip of backyard, while cluttered with an insane variety of vegetation, was organized in its chaos. Clearly someone, almost certainly Eddie, put much effort into the space. Dean recognized many of the plants from various ‘recipes’ in his father’s journal and Bobby’s library: rosemary, black cohosh, white sage, mistletoe and holly trees, to name but a few. And he found it remarkable that even in the dead of winter, as his breath steamed gray and corporeal, the garden was thriving in great rambles of green foliage, red and white berries, tightly knotted vines. Just beyond a crooked wooden fence, there sat a pair of gravel strips off to one side that passed for parking. It would do.

Morning was fully upon the city, the fog burning off in what promised to be a spectacular, if nipple chilling, day. Dean jogged out the back gate and retrieved the Impala, more than a little relieved to have her back in eyeshot. He got twitchy when she was gone too long, started to imagine all manner of unfortunate events, like bikes scraping her sides or birds shitting on the roof, not that they didn’t whether Dean was watching or not. He was equally displeased with the idea of leaving Sam at the house alone, even for a couple of hours. Man, this whole trust thing was a bitch. He had to trust that Sammy was a big boy, could handle a half-dozen hippies for a couple of hours. And he had to trust that Eddie wouldn’t turn him into a toad as soon as they rounded the corner.

Dean raked a hand through his hair and shot breath through clenched teeth, a decisive hiss. He popped the trunk, did a cursory check to be sure everything was in order, and snagged a small cold steel boot knife. Better safe than sorry. Coming back through the kitchen, he found the house was finally waking in earnest. Top 40 radio drifted from room to room, there was water running somewhere, and Dean heard voices murmuring from down the hallway. One of the voices was Sam’s, the other was Eddie’s. Man, she showered fast. He found them, following their discussion, something pithy about encyclopedias and hoodoo rootwork.

“But I think the better option is using ginger instead of goldenseal. It’s a little safer and not endangered – ”

“Endangered plants?” Dean coughed as he stepped around the doorway. “Do we need a ‘Save the Goldenseal’ campaign now?”

Sam was standing in the middle of the room, turning a slow circle. He ogled the floor-to-ceiling book shelves that were sagging under the weight of perhaps hundreds of tomes. Some hand-bound, others modern paperbacks, spiral notebooks, weathered leather spines…or at least Dean hoped it was leather and not human skin. All dealt with the occult in some fashion. It rivaled Bobby’s stash, to be sure. Sam’s eyes were wide and glassy, jaw slack, in the throes of a complete nerd-out. One small window let a thin plank of sunlight into the room, catching dust motes, cat hair and the tips of Sam’s boots in its beam. “Dean…lookit – ”

“Yeah, I know, Rainman. Awesome.”

Eddie leaned towards Dean, speaking softly, almost reverent of Sam’s rapture since his mind clearly wasn’t on the goldenseal vs. ginger debate. “I told Sam what the plans are and checked in on Simon. He’s awake, pissy but alive. Not a morning person, that one. Ready to go?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Then, more loudly, to cut through Sam’s book-induced stupor “You good, Sammy?”

Just a nod in return, but that was enough. Dean and Eddie left out the front door.

*

“So what did Sylvie say about us? About _me_?” Dean was really just making small talk as they walked the eight or so blocks to Eddie’s garden. Which, she supplied, was called Urban Oasis.

“Eh. She might’ve mentioned you in passing. I’d ask Julian; she seems to have said more to him.”

Dean quirked a brow, a silent question stalled on his lips.

Eddie grinned. “Yeah, she and Jules were hittin’ it pretty hard.”

“No shit! Mr. Masterpiece Theatre?”

“Hey, now. He’s a decent guy, and she’s good for him. You shoulda seen him before Sylvie. He was so uptight you coulda shoved coal up his ass and made diamonds.”

“Huh.” Dean mulled on this for a moment, feeling a twinge of jealousy but not really. He had no right. “So what’s Julian’s shtick?”

“Shtick?” Eddie bristled and looked at Dean. Hard. Her hair was still wet and it stuck to her cheek in delicate threads. “You mean his area of magical expertise? He sees ghosts.”

“Like that kid from ‘Sixth Sense’? “ ‘I see dead people’?”

“Yeah, I suppose so. Julian used to think it was just his imagination or stress until the visits got worse. More insistent. Sometimes violent. The spirits never let him be. Of course his family didn’t get it. They put him on every anti-psychotic known to medicine, but you know as well as I do that won’t work. It just made him sluggish, impotent, _and_ haunted. So he came to us looking for help. We taught him how to screen them out through meditation and some lesser rituals. Make himself, well, unappealing to ghosts. Isn’t 100 percent foolproof but Julian can function again and that’s what counts.”

Eddie had to work to keep up with Dean’s stride, so he slowed for her sake. Or maybe for his own; what she said gave him pause and he wasn’t exactly in a hurry to look at flowers. “Was he always like that? Born seeing ghosts?”

She nodded. “We all were born this way. Different.”

Dean chewed on that for a half-block. Compared to Sammy and this paranormal Breakfast Club, he felt downright average. No hallucinations, spoon-bending, channeling, none of that crap. Except he knew the stuff existed, had seen it first hand, raised to look for it and fight it and live beyond the boundaries of ‘average’. In that respect, he knew all about being different. If you wore the name Winchester, you couldn’t help but be different. Didn’t mean he loved it all the time; that’s just the way things were. Best not to think on it too hard.

“Have you considered letting Julian poke around Ghostville for telltale signs of the missing girls?” Because if they were dead, this became not a rescue, but revenge. Made massive amounts of difference in approach and execution. Mostly in execution.

“Yep. No dice.” Eddie’s teeth worried over a lip; she must’ve had the same thought as Dean. “But sometimes talking to spirits is like herding cats. The upside was he didn’t see anyone we knew. Hope that means they’re still…”

“I hear ya. So tell me about the girls who disappeared. All of them within the past six months?”

“Janey was the first to vanish. She’s a barista at Starbucks. And a fortune teller. Kick-ass with the tarot. Then, Felicity Rebeau. Automatic painter. I’ll have to show you the van Gogh she channeled a couple of years ago. It’s gorgeous.”

Eddie guided Dean through a congestion of tightly bunched pedestrians, disparate and stoic and focused on heading in the contrary direction, to the exclusion of personal space and common courtesy. Dean was forced to shoulder through, nearly spinning a tall, rail-thin man in a ratty gray coat into a very pregnant woman pulling a wheeled briefcase of some sort. The man might’ve looked familiar for all of fifteen seconds but Dean had lost sight of Eddie and she was his priority.

He relocated her waving at him from a steepening side street, the sort of incline that stretched Dean’s calves and tested his lungs. In the midst of the city sat these considerable copses of green, preserved and surprisingly wild compared to the concrete and urban saturation typical of a metropolis with over 700,000 people clinging to its hillside. The farther up the hill they marched, the more remote it felt and Dean started to appreciate why people made the trek. The air was biting and fresh and the sounds of the city became background, like the crash of surf or the deep hum of a giant human engine.

Eddie kept talking, breathless as they mounted the considerable slope. “And then there was Hannah. That one really hits hard because she has kids. Twins. She didn’t stay at the house with the rest of us, but then, she wasn’t gifted either. Just kinda into the New Age thing. She’d stop by for workshops or meditation or lead yoga some mornings. Even got Danny to do Downward Facing Dog, and that wasn’t easy, believe me.”

Eventually their trail topped out in front of a lopsided cedar fence, graying from exposure, creaking as the wind kicked up and whistled and tossed Eddie’s hair, ruffled Dean’s, being too short to do anything else. It stung his earlobes and he blew into cupped palms to thaw his tingling fingers. A hand-painted sign, ‘Urban Oasis’, swayed back and forth, to and fro. Eddie slipped a silver chain threaded through a key from around her neck and opened a rusty padlock. “Three weeks ago, Sprite disappeared. Street kid. Psychometric. She comes and goes at a whim, but it’s not like her to stay gone this long. And none of the homeless have seen her.”

“Psycho – ?”

“She reads objects. Picks up vibes from them.”

To which Dean nodded as though he knew that all along, and Eddie deadpanned a glare as though he was chock full of shit.

Dean cleared his throat. “And then…Sylvie.”

“Yeah, Sylvie.”

“So. Five women. Not all of them were even actual witches — sorry, _magi_ — and the only thing they had in common was a vagina and they knew you.”

“Thanks. That makes me feel a whole lot better.” But she didn’t sound annoyed. Weary and worried, yes. Annoyed, no. Dean also noted, from her verb tenses, she still believed they were all alive. This was either wishful thinking or she was one sneaky mass murderer. Dean was leaning towards the former.

Eddie pushed open the gate and stepped inside the garden. It wasn’t so much a garden as layer after layer of patchwork plots, some raised beds, others simply bound by ornamental brick or chicken-wire fencing. Each one had its own personality, and each one was thriving beyond what anything should’ve been this time of year. Mostly cabbage and squashes and your standard vegetable fare, seasonal enough not to raise eyebrows. And each plot featured a little plaque that announced its gardener: The Smiths, Bob and Cathy Chin, Grover’s Greenstuff. Dean’s boots kicked up the pungent scent of fresh mulch as Eddie escorted him down the pathway. There must’ve been at least fifty plots.

“So what’s your theory about all this?” Dean asked, pausing at a barren bee hive. It still smelled of honey.

Eddie stopped, stuffed her hands in the pockets of her parka and huddled her shoulders. “I wish I had a theory. I even tried the city’s psychics, the ones that aren’t frauds, and they’ll hardly talk to me. They’re terrified, Dean. And that makes me really, really scared.”

“What about other covens in the city? I dunno, maybe someone with a grudge? Someone who thinks you’re trying to give witches a good name?”

“Oh, for…” Eddie looked like she wanted to be irritated by the suggestion but stopped herself, tawny brows furrowing. “I can’t say they’re not out there but I steer clear of the covens as a rule. We’re just not on the same page, you know? One of the psychics warned me to avoid Chinatown, but I always did that anyway. There’s been weird shit going on in Chinatown for a long as I’ve been here in the city. Almost five years now.”

“Chinatown, huh. Interesting.”

She looked at Dean expectantly but he left it at that. Sometimes it was prudent to play things close to the vest. If he’d learned anything from his brother it was that information was power. You couldn’t shoot a chupacabra with it but you sure as hell could con a conman if you knew something he, or she, didn’t.

Eddie shrugged, smiled vaguely, and continued on towards a shack in the back corner of the garden. If you didn’t know it was there, you might not even see it for all the vines and evergreens and compost centers around the building. Dean jogged to catch up as Eddie was unlocking the door with yet another key. This shack, unlike the garden proper, was warded nine ways to Sunday. He saw the sigils carved into the doorframe, many he didn’t recognize. Eddie’s self-styled hexbags were tucked into the eaves like tiny wasps’ nests, and the decorative wreath that hung on the door was constructed of obscure herbs and sprigs and greenery that amounted to some sort of protection device, Dean suspected.

“My office,” she said by way of explanation. It hardly looked like any office Dean had seen before but then Eddie was unlike any witch he knew. She stepped inside, shut the door as soon as he was clear.

Dean scanned the space silently. It was maybe the size of Bobby’s living room, a rustic handmade table to one side and a pair of lawn chairs adjacent to sit upon. Rough flagstone tiled the floor; strings of white Christmas lights edged a ceiling that was open to the bright blue sky, obscured only by wide, crisscrossed lattice and a sheer drape of netting. Enormous all-weather pillows were strewn about in case the chairs just wouldn’t do and from the lattice Eddie had hung hanks of flowers to dry. The bunches rustled in the wind that banked through the roof and off the walls, like whispers, like secrets. But the most remarkable thing was the living flora: the whole back half of the building was crowded by a forest of tall, leggy plants, hand-shaped leaves with thin leaflets like jagged-edged fingers. Ganja. Pot. Cannabis. Marijuana.

Eddie turned to Dean; her eyes were glittering. And Dean knew he could get in all kinds of trouble here.


	9. Chapter 9

  


Orderly towers of books, a small fortune’s worth, edged the desk where Sam sat behind their skyline, a city constructed of the printed word. In an hour’s time he had devoured ‘Demons I Have Known’, thumbed through ‘Folklore Versus Fiction in the Modern Age’, and skimmed ‘The Encyclopedia Maleficarum’, which he’d read before but it was good to get a refresher.

Danny had passed by the library maybe fifteen minutes ago and threw Sam a dark, slippery scowl that spoke volumes about how much he distrusted the Winchesters and would rather see them punched in the throats than sitting in his house. And Sam had given Danny a slight cant of the head, a hesitant wave. Smooth.

Sam glanced at his watch, thought it was time to check on Simon again. Maybe clean up some of this mess. He was stretched to the extent of his long arms, sliding books back to the topmost shelf when he felt eyes settle on his shoulders, light pressure on his shins, the air stirring. Eddie’s cat was back like a bad penny, making brief chirruping noises in a plea for attention.

And then someone yawned from the doorway. “Morning, Paul Bunyan.”

So Sam didn’t have to check on Simon after all, but he did make a mental note to retire a few of his flannel shirts when he had the chance.

The kid leaned on the door frame, twigs for arms wrapped around himself and purple hair mashed flat on one side, sleep pants barely caught on knobby hips and feet naked except for black nail polish. He looked more cartoon character than computer genius.

“Morning, Tiny Tim. Um, how’re you feeling?”

Simon snorted, maybe some indication of truce about the height jokes. He shuffled into the room and balanced his rear on the edge of the desk, elbow resting on a book pile. “Feeling fine, I s’pose. Isn’t this place awesome?”

Sam half-grinned, ran fingers over the titles on the next shelf down. “Yeah, kinda awesome.”

“When I first got to the house, I slept in this room. Kid you not. Dragged the futon mattress in here and didn’t leave for a month. Except to piss, ‘course. Eddie made me come to the kitchen for food. The book, she is beautiful. Even prettier when transferred to the digital format.” Simon set a hand to his heart, gaze rolling to the ceiling.

“I don’t know; I like books. The smell, how they feel in your hands…”

“Yeah but it would be all kinds of amazing to have a database of the supernatural, available to everyone. Pagans, magi, _hunters_. Right?”

Sam had to give him that, strange, likeable little nerd. “What brought you to the house, Simon?”

Simon’s expression shifted, heavied, took on weight from something unsaid. “It was Judah, actually. He found me.”

Sam remained quiet, just kept watching, brows quirking to encourage the kid’s continued explanation. It worked.

“See, dunno if you guessed, but I’m a little gay—”

“No, really?”

“I know, right? I hide it well. Anyway, as every gay boy from Fresno who gets thrown out of the house at fifteen does, I floated down to San Francisco, in search of fame, fortune, and a good fuck.”

“TMI, man.”

“Sorry; my bad. Judah caught me hacking into an ATM around the corner. Guess he put two and two together and came up with _magic_.” Simon fluttered his fingers as though flicking glitter. “Been here ever since. Going on four years.”

“So who, and where, is this Judah?”

More weighty stalling on Simon’s part. His fingers settled in his lap. Sighed. “Founder of the house. Helluva mage. Dunno where he is now, though. Left about a year ago.”

Sam moved to the desk, dripping curiosity, sat back in the rickety old chair and looked up at Simon. “Left? Or disappeared…”

The kid frowned; clearly it hadn’t occurred to him before. “No, I’m pretty sure he _left_ left. See, he and Eddie started fighting. Knock-down drag-outs. And this wasn’t normal for them. ‘Normal’ was…” and Simon threaded one finger through the curl of his other hand in the universal gesture for sex. “I overheard some really weird arguments. Don’t get me wrong; I like the guy. Hell, he owns this house, lets us live here, taught us how to be magi and walk the White Path. But Christmas before last, he started getting antsy. Like things just weren’t happening fast enough. Don’t ask me what things…he just…” Simon shrugged, kept his gaze pinned to his hands.

“So he up and left?” Sam coaxed.

“Yup. One night, he packed up his shit and bolted. Took everything—”

“Not everything.”

“Huh?”

Sam tapped the notebook he’d been perusing half-heartedly which now seemed considerably more interesting. “I think this is his.”

“No shit.” Simon practically sat in Sam’s lap to get a peek at the battered spiral notebook. “Where did you find this?!”

“Top shelf, behind some other books.”

“Figures. You freakin’ telephone pole.”

“Look, I can’t help that I’m tall; you, on the other hand, _chose_ to Miss Clairol your hair purple.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Simon flipped through the sheets hyperactively, pausing only to scan this passage or that. One thing was clear: from what Sam had noted previously, the handwriting which had been fairly orderly at the binder’s start became less and less cohesive as pages passed, the scrawl losing legibility and when it seemed the author couldn’t find the words, he began to doodle pictures. The sketches made about as much sense as the bizarre text, ink smeared and blotted and sometimes speckled as though it had been rained upon. Conspicuously wrinkled circles of diluted ink, like colored tears.

“Did Judah dabble in the more fringe practices? Charles Manson-level weirdness?”

“Hells, no! At least, I don’t think so. But this…yeah, this crap is coo-coo for CoCoPuffs, for sure.”

Sam hovered over Simon’s shoulder and they inspected the strange journal in tandem until Sam caught glimpse of a familiar image. He snagged Simon’s hand in his own, staying the turn of pages.

Mouths. Teeth. A dark scribbled mass with jaws and lips and tongue, everywhere. The text that surrounded the drawing was completely unreadable to Sam, though it smacked of ancient Babylonian. Bobby might recognize it.

“What the fuck is that?” Simon mumbled, not really expecting a reply.

“I’ve seen it before.”

He shot Sam a sudden stare, pulled back an inch or three like he just realized Sam might be hot to the touch. “For real? In what? Your nightmares?”

Since Sam hadn’t come up with a better way to tell Simon, flopping it out there, bigger than life and twice as ugly, seemed to be the way to go. Especially since circumstance had given him the perfect opening.

“Well, I have these, um, visions. Of weird shit about to happen. And I saw this thing.” Sam tapped the page, shifted uncomfortably.

“What was it doing?” Simon asked, his voice thin and reedy and a little cracked around the edges.

“I think it was eating you.”

Now Simon _did_ jump back, well out of Sam’s reach. “What do you mean, eating me?!” The kid was nearly trembling out of his sloppy pajamas.

“Settle, it’s okay! I won’t let anything happen to you, Simon. I promise. These visions I get are just premonitions; we’ve been able to stop them from happening before. And we’ll stop them this time.” Okay, maybe that was underplaying the threat a tad but Simon was about to have a full-on panic attack and that would certainly have been a headache Sam didn’t need.

Simon looked entirely unconvinced, baby-smooth cheeks flushed an agitated pink against the pale of the rest of his face. “H-how do you know?”

_I don’t know, kid, but sometimes you’ve just gotta plow forward on a wing and a prayer._ Sam stood, pulling himself to his full and impressive height, backlit by the morning’s growing sun and cutting a long shadow across the room. Typically, he hated doing this, using what Dean called his “freakish sasquatch body” to intimidate but this was one of those instances where broad shoulders and a stern expression implied authority. “Because it’s my job, Simon. Dean and I, we’re hunters. Damned good at what we do. You stick with us, and this, this _thing_ will not eat you. Is that clear?”

Simon stared, glassy-eyed, nodding almost imperceptibly.

“Good. Now, uh, go get some coffee. Get dressed. Relax. Nothing bad’s going to happen in the next fifteen minutes. Capisce?”

“Oh. Okay.” Simon slipped out, giving Sam a wide berth, still quivering.

The kid was making him nervous by sheer proximity and Sam needed a break. He exhaled long and hard, swiped a hand through his hair which desperately needed an oil change. Hell, his whole body craved a good soak and a scrub. Wasn’t likely to happen at the Red Vic, though. Stupid communal bathrooms. Maybe Eddie would let Sam use that enormous claw-footed tub he saw upstairs. It looked big enough he could almost stretch the length of it, which was a rarity these days. Sam wandered back to the desk, fingers trailing over that damned creepy notebook. He picked it up, rifled through the pages, looking for other recognizable scribbles. The narrative was hopeless, even when it was legible. Grandiose, self-important blather that didn’t sound like the altruistic soul Simon seemed to think Judah was. If Sam had been a betting man, which he wasn’t, his money would’ve been on Judah as The Big Bad, exacting some sort of vengeance upon Eddie for an imagined betrayal. Or perhaps a genuine one, who knew?

Sam turned the notebook upside down and shook it, like one did with magazines to dislodge those annoying subscription cards. A single business card shuddered free to the desk. Sam picked it up, pinched it between thumb and forefinger. Thick, expensive stock, the printing embossed in slick ebony, like dead man’s blood. It read ‘The Black Lotus’, followed by Chinese characters, under which was another line in English: ‘Hang Ah Alley’. What Sam had assumed in his fevered premonition was a water lily was actually, in point of fact, a lotus blossom. He was quite certain, felt the thrill of it in his gut.

“Paydirt,” Sam murmured, a ghost of a smile tilting his lips.

*

“Dude. This thing is a relic!” Simon played with the radio of the Impala, bent forward to inspect the cassette player like it was some rare creature with seven legs and a nose where its ass should’ve been.

“Don’t say that out loud around Dean. He’ll knock you into next week.”

Simon was trying to stick his finger in the tape entry when Sam threw a shoebox of aging cassettes, pulled from beneath the bench seat, into the kid’s lap. Simon pawed through the mess, squinting to read fading, handwritten titles, shaking one of the plastic rectangles as though it would help him recognize the band name. Jostle loose the information.

“Nazareth? Is your brother into _Christian_ rock? Ew.”

Sam rolled his eyes and snatched away the cassette, slamming it into the player. After a moment of hiss and static, slow guitar filled the car, sinuous and masculine and mournful in its vaguely retro lament about “love” and its various “hurts”, judging by the lyrics.

This shut Simon up for a few blessed minutes, allowing for Sam to concentrate on where they were heading. Chinatown. Hung Ah Alley. He didn’t have a clue what they’d do once they got there. He’d been unable to get Dean on the phone and had been forced to leave a voicemail, but Sam just couldn’t see fit to lounge around the house, waiting for Dean to turn up or something to happen or paint to dry, whichever came first. Not when a lead had practically landed in his lap. It concerned him that Dean wasn’t picking up, though not enough to track down Eddie’s garden. Not yet anyway. He honestly didn’t think Eddie was mean-spirited. Manipulative? Absolutely. Not malevolent. Sure, she was keeping secrets but Dean was cagey enough to weasel them out of her, which was probably what he was doing at this very second. Sam put in another quick call, just in case. Voicemail a second time. “Hey, Dean, me again. Call me when you can. Just…check in, okay?” Sam’d already left the fieldtrip information in a previous recording so if Dean wanted to join him, he could drift thataway.

“I can call Eddie, see if she picks up?” Simon offered.

“Great, yeah, do that.”

The call was made and Simon relayed that yes, Dean was with her. And no, they didn’t get any of Sam’s calls, maybe Dean’s phone was dead? No, wait, he must’ve dropped it somewhere. He can’t find it. But they could call her if they needed Dean—

Sam made grabby fingers towards the phone. “Tell her to put Dean on.”

Simon did and Eddie obliged. Sam heard Dean laughing on the other end of the line before he spoke.

“Dean?!”

“Sammy…whassup?”

Dean sounded far too relaxed for anyone’s good. Like he’d been nursing a bottle of Jack for the better part of the day then chased it with a handful of happy pills.

“Dean, what the hell? Are you…are you _drunk_?”

There was a pause, more stifled laughter.

“No sir, I am not drunk. Not even a little. Nope, not me.”

Sam pulled the phone back, stared at it as though getting some distance would make all things clear…which it did not… and pressed it back to his ear. “Okay, so I’m taking Simon to Chinatown with me. Chasing a lead. Meet you back at the house for lunch.”

“Wait, what? No, no you shouldn’t go to Chinatown because all the psychics say…not that I believe in psychics exactly but, yanno…they say it’s bad mojo and – ”

“Whatever. Bye, Dean.”

Sam threw the phone back to Simon, nine kinds of irritation making a knot out of his stomach. What the hell was Dean doing, getting blotto this early in the day?! During a case, no less. Dammit, he _knew_ Eddie would be trouble as far as Dean was concerned. Sam smelled the smolder between them, almost from the get-go.

But then, on the other hand, maybe Sam had it coming. Wasn’t this exactly what he did back at that New England bed-n-breakfast, little over a month ago? Got smashed because, well, he simply needed it? Needed some release and self-pity to get his bearings back, readjust priorities? Sam relaxed his grip on the steering wheel so the blood could return to his knuckles. Simon simply stared, knew better than to ask, just pocketed the phone and turned up the radio.

_Love Hurts_ segued into _Hair of the Dog_ , which seemed to amuse Simon to no end—“More cowbell!”—as Sam captained the Impala through San Francisco’s narrow streets, the infrastructure reminding him not a little of those Escher drawings, the ones where strange passageways jutted out at illogical angles. Chinatown, however, was obvious once you got there. Heralded by the huge façade of a pagoda-like gate and 1920’s style lampposts strung with fringed ornamental lanterns, the thoroughfares quickly became clogged with tourists and, as it was approaching lunchtime, locals in search of good dim sum. It was clear they’d have to park the Impala and hoof it, which Sam did, after a fashion, perhaps a block from Chinatown proper.

“I’m not so sure we should be doing this.” Simon caught up to Sam after the meter was fed, forced to take two steps for every one of Sam’s.

“Couldn’t very well leave you home alone,” Sam said, hands shoved in pockets, eyes habitually scanning doorways and corners and open windows. “Besides, aren’t you the slightest bit curious?”

“Of being eaten?! Not, not even a little.”

“Chicken shit.” Sam grinned. He was just giving the kid grief, mental masturbation while he got theories and facts sorted out in his brain. Before he left, he’d taken pictures of some of the scrawl from Judah’s notebook and emailed them to Bobby, in the hopes the older hunter, with his facility for languages and copious records, could parse out what it all meant. Rather seemed like Judah had gone done flipped his lid but that didn’t make him any less dangerous, if anything more so.

“No, seriously, man. I…I don’t wanna go. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Sam stopped and turned on Simon, fixing the kid with a grimace. It wasn’t that Sam didn’t have sympathy for Simon’s high-strung nature, but now it was just getting exasperating. Like one of those yappy pocket puppies carried by celebutantes, the kind that nip at your fingers every time you try to untangle it from its leash. “What’s wrong, Simon? Is it something specific? We’re almost there. Come on; buck up, little soldier.”

“No.”

“No?”

Sam sat his hands on his hips, huffed unhappily, which gave Simon the opportunity to turn tail and head off in the opposite direction back towards the car, forcing Sam to give chase. Wasn’t much of a chase, though. Three long strides and Simon was within arm’s reach. Sam spun the kid by a grab to one shoulder, catching a wrist, Simon’s free arm flailing and slapping ineffectually at Sam. Like spaghetti flinging at a wall. Simon was starting to whimper, choked little noises, bony chest hitching on the verge of terror.

“I can’t go there I can’t I won’t – ”

Something else was happening here besides anxiety, Sam was convinced. He pulled Simon closer, firmly slapped the kid’s cheek but the sting did nothing to banish the panic. If anything, Simon’s whimper grew to a wail, swelled in volume and pitch until passers-by were staring with apprehension. _Fantastic._ It was then that Sam noticed heat under his fingertips, issuing from Simon’s spindly forearm. Heat beyond the norm, a pinpoint fever, hot to the degree of discomfort. A sear that radiated from the magical tattoo on the underside of Simon’s wrist. It didn’t look any different, but it was.

Sam curled an arm around Simon, whispering into the crown of his violet hair. “Shh, cool it. It’s okay. We’re not going.”

“We…w-we’re n-not? ‘Cause if you’re l-l-lying to me I’ll…I’ll…”

“Nope. Not going. I promise.”

Simon was quivering, practically vibrating, sniffling into the front of Sam’s shirt but growing calm. Thank God.

“Simon, where did you get this tattoo?” Sam patted the kid’s head and slightly loosened his grip, flickering a conciliatory smile at the gang of concerned citizens who’d collected across the street.

“W-whadya mean? At a tattoo parlor in, um, North Beach.”

“No, I mean where did you find the symbol?”

Simon winced, his brow furrowing. “Eddie? No, wait, Judah got it from somewhere.”

Well, now it made sense if you applied a little imagination. The tattoo wasn’t a scrying deterrent at all but some flavor of ward. Stay away upon penalty of death. No trespassing. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. A sure sign this Black Lotus was the nexus of…something.

“Does everyone in the house have these?”

“Most of us. I think.”

“Crap. Simon, I’m pretty sure Judah lied to you guys about this symbol, or the spell behind it. It seems to be keeping you out of a certain area.”

Simon turned wild eyes on Sam, throat working like a fish gulping air, scrubbing at the tattoo in the apparent hope he could wipe it clean off.

“Whoa, whoa. We’ll deal with this later. Let’s just get you back to the car, okay? You can wait there for me.”

Simon said nothing but nearly scrambled his brains with violent nodding.

Once secure in the arms of the Impala, Sam gave firm instructions for Simon to call if anything, _and I mean anything_ , seemed out of order. Lock the doors. Stay down. Do NOT go anywhere. And Simon agreed most ardently.

Sam returned to Chinatown alone. He was a big boy; he didn’t need a babysitter. He wasn’t going to get himself in deep, just poke around to see if there was anything to this Black Lotus theory. If he could find the place.

He asked at a nondescript, no-nonsense Shanghai-style diner for directions to Hang Ah Alley, grabbed an order of potstickers to go, and quickly found himself off the beaten path where the tourists didn’t tread and most of the storefronts were caged behind metal antitheft bars. Odd counterpoint to the community recreational area that anchored one end of the alley, though there was nobody on the playground equipment, it being a school day and all. Very few folks, Chinese or otherwise, floated about. The narrow street, dirtied by pigeon droppings and litter, had the uncomfortable air of an Old West ghost town, grimy and barren and haunted at its corners. People moved behind the windows, watched Sam with undisguised mistrust, went about their business as not to catch his eye. The buildings weren’t overly tall; Sam could stand at the edge of the sidewalk and look up the facades all the way to the rooftops. Nothing said “Black Lotus” in English or otherwise, and it would probably be extremely unwise to ask.

He was in the process of looking for a garbage can in which to deposit his half-empty cardboard carton when a second-story window scraped open, the old wood casement squealing, sounds of something clacking like dominoes or dice or bones or, most likely, mahjongg tiles drifting from the building. It caught his eye, and good thing too because right below the window was a single, deeply recessed door, painted a glossy red lacquer. How he missed it before was something of a worry. Magically obscured? Probably. He wouldn’t put anything past a witch or mage or warlock or whatever, if this was indeed Judah’s playhouse.

Set into the door, a small rectangular sliding peephole centered at around Sam’s chin level, and above that, a handful of Chinese characters accompanied by a simple stylized lotus flower, all outlined in black. Sam whipped out the calling card, confirming a match. He didn’t believe in luck but if he did, this would be it.

A quick glance around revealed no visible wards and a careful tug on the ornate brass knob confirmed it was, as expected, locked.

Out came the lock picks he’d retrieved from the magi’s house. The knob, lock and faceplate were not new; if anything, they were very, very old. Weathered in dusky patina and possessing a delicacy and attention to detail that modern designs hardly bothered with these days, the tumblers dropped easily under Sam’s discerning touch. The door dragged open with an expected metallic whinge; Sam slowed his pace and the noise quieted. Twelve, fifteen inches was all he needed to slip inside, so once he achieved that span, he was in like Flynn, door shut softly behind.

The Black Lotus, at first glance, appeared to be some sort of private club. The front door opened into a vestibule, paneled in dark, lustrous wood, intricately carved molding, and if not for the dim glow of a light left burning somewhere down a distant hall, the area would’ve been a near-vacuum of black. Windowless. Sound dampened like a mausoleum, albeit a very well-appointed mausoleum. Sam’s footfalls were cushioned by plush oriental carpets and he could just barely make out banks of velvet-upholstered sofas and ottomans and benches, highly ornate console tables, drapes softening the look of the walls in a purely decorative fashion. A waiting area, he reasoned, where the patrons bided their time before…what? Had to be something illicit, just had to be. Sam felt it in his gut, in the way the tender hairs at his nape prickled. That, and there was a sickly sweet note to the air that went beyond simple incense or even pot smoke. If Sam had to guess, it was opium.

As a precaution, he slipped his gun from the small of his back, held it down to the side, the smooth feel of cold metal in his palm settling dancing nerves. Dean loved this shit, the pulse of adrenaline shooting through his veins, yanking him well and fully alive as only ‘fight or flight’ could do. Sam? Not so much, though the feeling was familiar enough to be useful and dare he say, invigorating? Okay, not really. It made him sweat. If not for the curiosity, he’d be leaving now, returning to the car and waiting for Dean to come with. As long as Dean was sober enough to function.

Sam shook off the mild annoyance he felt aimed towards his brother and crept silently, carefully, down the hall that snaked away from the reception area. Closed doors banked either side of the corridor but he didn’t dare open any until he figure out if the one door left ajar, where the light was issuing from, had no one behind it. As he neared, he held his breath. Shook unkempt bangs out of his eyes. Leveled all focus on the softly lit room.

Not a single sound floated from the open room. Not breathing, the shuffling of feet or papers or the rustle of cloth, nothing. It was so quiet he could hear his heart triple-time pounding in his ears. Sam toed the door a fraction of an inch. Still nothing. He got brave, nudged an inch or two more, eyeing what he could of the room now. The same lush décor as the lobby, a sliver of beautifully preserved desk, brass wastepaper basket…that was the extent of what was viewable from this point. The shadows were inanimate, stock still. Until they weren’t anymore.

Sam was lifting a hand to push farther when the door flew wide and the barrel of a gun rocketed into his chest. Well, his belly, then his chest, because the gun’s wielder was tiny. A good foot shorter than Sam, maybe more. And very, very beautiful.


	10. Chapter 10

  


Sam froze, arms drifting upwards, left hand open wide and the right loosely palming his gun.

“Don’t…don’t shoot.” Seemed like the right thing to say at the time.

The woman looked up at him through cat-slanted eyes, black as pitch in the way of non-Caucasians. Her hair, equally dark, parted precisely in the very center of her scalp and drifted, silk-like, well beyond fragile shoulders. Sam could see little else from his bird’s eye view except her gun and the gentle curve of breasts where the dress was strategically tailored away. From this close proximity, Sam smelled her heady perfume: jasmine, cloves, something else vaguely incongruous that he couldn’t quite identify.

“Why have you broken into my business?” Her words were heavily colored with an accent. Mandarin, Sam supposed. Taking a small step back, she examined him head to toe, expression unreadable.

“If you’ll let me get into my coat pocket, I can show you identification—”

“NO.” The gun repositioned quickly to point at Sam’s nose.

“Okay, okay. This is me, not moving.” Despite summoning every ounce of sincerity and wearing it on his face, Sam was not swaying the woman. There was an equally strong possibility she would not appreciate his membership to any official organization like, oh, the police, FBI or Health Department anyway. This was probably not the sort of operation that ran aboveboard, just a guess. “I’m looking for someone.”

She arched one perfectly manicured brow. “I’m afraid this isn’t that sort of establishment, and you don’t look like the sort of man who pays for sex.”

Sam felt his cheeks heat up, sweat trickle down his spine. _Shit, what would Dean do?_ This was not Sam’s bailiwick. “Maybe I’m having a bad string of luck in the relationship department.” He prayed that didn’t come off as totally pathetic as it sounded to his own ears, even though it might’ve been true.

“Or maybe you’re looking for something else. Put your gun on the floor. Slowly.”

Sam did as he was told, left hand still airborne, watching her in his periphery.

“Now step away from it. Towards me, please and thank you.”

And he did. She darted a shiny patent-leather pump to one side, and the gun was kicked beyond Sam’s reach. Small wonder, given how tight her skirt was. Tight and red, slick as a sports car.

“Take off your coat.”

She was leaving nothing to chance. Her gun maintained its single-eyed stare and Sam had no real recourse but to obey. He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it to the floor. “I’m not here to rob you.”

“If you say so.” She looked a touch amused by this, eyes flashing in the dim light of a high-end office lamp, brass and crystal. “If you would be so kind as to turn out your pockets, put the contents on the desk…”

Sam took two careful steps towards the desk, fished hands into the pockets of his jeans. He had nothing useful remaining as a weapon except the boot knife at his ankle, and that wasn’t going to be an easy draw at the moment. There was, however, an ivory letter opener on the near side of the desk, and it had an edge and a point and would do in a pinch if the situation got dire.

An odd assortment of items tumbled onto the leather blotter from his opened fists: tiny skull-shaped beads on a cord, worry stones, coins, the Black Lotus business card, rubber bands collected in a neat loop, money clip with a few sad bills, the pentagram charm Bobby gave the boys to prevent possession, lint, and lastly a small pocketknife. She eyed the collection, pinching a narrow trough between those perfect brows in obvious dismay. Something had caught her attention and from all outward appearances, it did not make her happy. Made Sam happy though, because her distraction became his advantage.

He casually palmed the letter opener; this was where it paid to have big hands. Didn’t want to hurt her, not really, as there was nothing concrete to tie her to conspicuous wrong-doings, at least of the supernatural variety. He simply wanted a weapon at the ready. But she saw his slight-of-hand. The gun went off and a bullet seared into Sam’s left upper arm, spinning him around and down and slammed into the corner. The situation went south in a mad hurry.

His breath sucked inwards fast, comets of blazing white pain exploding behind tightly squeezed eyelids. Adrenaline, panic, the burn of metal cleaving muscle pulled a groan through Sam’s gritted teeth. His limbs got watery and useless and the woman swore at him, a string of words in her native tongue that required no translation. She was pissed, and seemed far less concerned about his injury than the junk from his pockets.

“Hunter?!” She shrieked in English, and gone was the demure hostess of dubious vocation. Teeth flashed and hair like a raven’s glossy wing turned wild with fury. “You think your stupid fucking little charm can protect you?!” A wicked grin split candy-apple red lips and eyes blazed scarlet as smoldering coals. Sam blinked, felt his blood run cold except where it leaked out his arm. There, it was on fire.

Before he could blink twice, she was on him, straddling one thigh, fingers snarled in his hair like vices, the pain forcing tears. Three, four times she slammed the back of his head into the front of the wall, denting the paneling and possibly his skull. Sam bucked but there was no where to go and she was frighteningly strong. “Christo,” he grit out. “CHRISTO.”

Her eyes strobed hot crimson again, leaving no doubt as to what lived inside this woman.

*

“Aw, come on, Dean. Slow down…”

He heard Eddie jogging to catch up but screw ‘er. She could run. It was her God damned fault Sam went off to Chinatown alone before Dean had the chance to warn him about the psychics’ 411. Or at least that’s what he told himself because it made him feel better even though he didn’t come close to believing it. He should never have left Sam alone. He’d fumbled the Prime fucking Directive.

“Dean!” She pulled at his sleeve to stop him, her breath tugging, but he jerked his arm away without so much as a sideways glance. “Would you stop, already?”

He ignored her. A flea to his raging hound of worry. Dean’s mind was clicking through all the possible wayward scenarios that could be transpiring in his absence, all the injuries and misadventures and references to past Sammy behavior that might happen simply because Dean wasn’t there with his heroic force of will to prevent them.

Suddenly, she wasn’t trying anymore. No pitter-patter of girly footfalls or labored breathing. No pot and perfume-scented aura, no warm body trailing in his wake. Dean swore under his breath and stopped, turning around as though it were the weightiest thing in the world he’d ever been asked to do.

“All right. ALL RIGHT. What?”

She was twenty paces back, looking winded and wounded and forlorn, blonde hair a crazy halo of fresh gold from having dried in the wind. Her hands hung at her sides, the palms facing Dean to lift briefly in a wan gesture of apology. Dean pressed a hiss through tight lips and walked back to Eddie.

“I had no idea Sam would go off by himself,” she said once he was within earshot. “But Dean, he’s a grown-up; he makes his own choices.”

Dean bit his cheek before responding, the pain dissolving a degree of rancor before it was spit in Eddie’s direction. “You don’t know anything about us. What we’ve been through. What kind of shit Sam can get into when left to his own devices. I made a promise to keep him safe. My whole fucking _life_ has been about keeping him safe!”

“And that means you can’t take a moment to stop and smell the roses? Get stoned on a beautiful day and take a load off?”

“That’s right, sister. That’s exactly what it means.”

“Bullshit, Dean!” Eddie stepped up, almost into him, foolish and daring all in one fell swoop. “I get it, how you want to protect him; he’s your baby brother. I feel the same way about the other magi. They’re the closest thing to family I’ve ever had, and I’d do anything for them—”

“Including suckering me with sex appeal and wacky weed? God, I was stupid.” Dean wanted to punch something so badly he felt his hands, and his heart, ball into fists.

Eddie’s eyes flickered and took on a liquid sheen, some acknowledgement he’d hit the nail right on its manipulative little head. “Touché. But I needed your help, Dean. I needed you to _want_ to help us, to look upon us kindly, which is something most people never ever do. I’m sorry. It…it wasn’t meant to be mean.”

“Jesus, Eddie, no one likes to feel duped! You didn’t think you could’ve just asked and that would’ve been enough?”

“Would it have been?!” She shot back, shouldering past when a single tear escaped the edge of her lashes. “Don’t tell me you never used your own pretty face and swagger to lean the odds in your favor.”

Dean was gobsmacked, but only for the amount of time it took to admit she was right on both counts. All of 2.5 seconds. He caught up with her at a quick jog, falling into step, and when he spoke again his voice was careful. “So. Now what?”

Eddie swiped at her cheek with one sleeve, sniffed, jaw edged forward stubbornly. “You borrow my phone again to call Sam, see where he’s at. Since you went and lost yours. Genius.”

 

*

 

The room was starting to wobble in front of Sam’s eyes and he knew it would disappear altogether if the bitch slammed his head one more time. He was fucked. Fucked hard. His lone hope was Simon, and wow, that was not optimistic. _Please, Simon, decide to be disobedient and contact Eddie and Dean and call in the cavalry. Please._ Sam wasn’t holding his breath, though. He struggled to keep the demoness in focus, maintain his slender hold on consciousness, steel himself for another bolt of pain…that never came.

She had paused, unmoving except perhaps for the slightest canting of her head, fingers loosening from his hair. Leaning closer, he felt a warm exhale at his temple.

“What are you?” Breathing deep, her voice whispered sultry, inquisitively, in Sam’s ear, began to weave itself into his throbbing brain.

He tried to turn away but she was having none of that. A palm, smooth and soft as kidskin, redirected his face forward. Almost immediately, the cheek under her hand tingled, thrummed, then faded to numb. The pain in his skull fled from her touch, like a topical anesthetic that somehow managed to breach the barrier of skin and work its way into muscle, hell, even bone. Logically, Sam knew this was wrong, all wrong, but then he hardly knew everything there was to know about demons. And his applicable knowledge seemed to be in short order, getting shorter with every passing second.

Again, she drew a great breath, dragged fingers through the blood that splattered the wall behind Sam’s head. Delicately, she lapped at her sticky thumb with her tongue, then each finger in turn, cleaning them of red. Sam managed a shudder.

“Oh, darling. You taste…like family. Just…delicious.”

He felt his stomach upend and fought to keep its contents in place. The deadening sensation was oozing down his neck and into his chest, his wounded arm, finally his belly. His eyelids began to flag and nothing hurt anymore. He couldn’t even twitch when the door slammed open and two figures shoved into the room.

“Naamah! Are you – ”

“Fine, no thanks to you two. This is going to come out of your pay.”

Naamah. He knew that name. _Think, Sam, think. You just read it, dumbass. Wake the shit up. ‘Demons I Have Known.’ Oh. Naamah, queen of the succubi. Yeah, it’s official. This is bad._

Two men stood stock still just inside Sam’s ebbing field of vision, mouths gaping, the both of them. One loomed nearly as tall as Sam but absurdly thin, like a walking corpse with a shock of black hair, and the other more traditionally attractive, if not for a graphic scar that ran across his scalp and cut a slice through the dark brown curls.

The tall one unfroze and stepped forward and dropped into a crouch, all pointed knees and elbows, mouth twisting into one of the most lethal grins Sam had seen since that carnival rakshasa in…guh…where? Some Midwest town. It was becoming impossible to hold a thought.

“I know you,” the man fairly purred, an underfed alley cat in the presence of fresh food. “You’re the other Winchester. Sammy. Bet your brother is worried sick about you. No, wait, he’s not. He’s banging that blonde witch from the blue house. Some guys get all the luck, don’t they?” He slipped a hand into the pocket of his raggedy gray overcoat and produced a phone. Dean’s phone. “And he’s sloppy, your brother. Needs to be more careful with his stuff. This is just bursting with information about you two. And it was really kind of you to call, let us know you were coming.”

Sam moaned, rolled his eyes because he knew he should, even though the otherworldly anesthesia had worked its way right down to his toes, nestling into the crevasses of his brain, stealing reason and fight. All that remained was a vague gnawing curiosity, but even that was fading.

“H-howwww – ?”

The word slopped out like a slug on Quaaludes, but apparently that one word was enough.

The man’s eyes flickered black briefly, meanly, before settling back into their cold nondescript gray. “I took a spin inside your pretty little hunter girlfriend…Sophie? Sally?”

“Ssss. Slyvie.”

“Right. Sylvie. She likes you. And Dean. But mostly Dean, because he’s the fun one. Thinks you’ve got great abs, though, and if you’d just loosen up a little, you could make all the girls cry.” The man laughed and thumped Sam’s thigh before standing up.

The demoness chuckled, cupped Sam’s chin in her hand, lifted his face and brushed her lips to his. In a confusing flicker of sensation, he was reminded of red rose petals and warm summers and lying in bed next to Jess after a wine-soaked Saturday night...it felt so wide off the mark but he couldn’t screw up the willpower to object. “But don’t you worry, Sammy. _Sam_. I don’t need you to be fun. I just thought of a very, very special job for you. Interesting, that your name is Sam. Auspicious. Judah would’ve been a mistake, I see that now. But he’s dead. Poor madman. You’re prettier anyway. And tall. I like tall.”

She was sweeping the hair from Sam’s forehead when a ringtone went off from the pile of coat on the floor. Wasn’t Dean’s ring, he didn’t think, nor Billy’s. No, wait, not Billy…Bobby. Just the generic ring.

The curly haired man dug through the jacket and found Sam’s phone, hit the proper button, smiled as he answered.

“Hello? Oh, I’m sorry. Sam can’t come to the phone right now.” Pause. “I’m his…social secretary. Right. Uh-huh. I see.” Longer pause. “Yeah, I don’t think you’ll be shoving my tongue that far down my throat anytime soon. But you have a nice day, ‘kay? Buh-bye.”

The lackeys shared laughter like twins, like lovers. Beyond familiar. And the demoness gave Sam’s cheek one last pat. “Turn that thing off, Cameron. No distractions. We have work to do. Gentlemen, I think we’ve found our fancy new meat suit.”

*

Dean stared at Eddie’s phone. Stared at it hard and willed it to burst into flames, which it did not.

“What?” Eddie read the seriousness of the situation instantly, Dean’s face being the proverbial open book in that regard. His brows were angry bolts over eyes that bored furious green lasers, free hand raking over his scalp leaving the hair in haphazard tufts.

“Fuck. He’s in a shit-ton of trouble. A mother fucking shit-ton. How close are we to Chinatown?” He started pacing, heavy boots pounding the concrete.

“I dunno, three blocks maybe, due south?”

Dean tossed her the phone and started off at a jog. “Call your boys,” he hollered over his shoulder. “Have them get there, like, yesterday.”

After a couple long city blocks, Dean heard someone panting up behind him and he slowed. His heart was pounding out of his chest anyway so Eddie’s arrival was an excellent excuse to catch his breath, save himself the trouble of having a stroke.

“Stop stop stop…c’mere…” Dean turned around; Eddie waved him over before slapping palms on her thighs, breath coming in great drags. “Simon is this way, in the car.”

“Oh, shit, the car.” Now that the Impala was mentioned, Dean spun and saw his baby down a perpendicular street, not half a block away, gleaming like home. Had he kept running, he would have missed her completely.

Simon got out of the car when Dean and Eddie neared, the chords in his neck standing out in a blatant indication of his alarm. He looked completely wrung out and jittery as though he’d been mainlining coffee for a week. “What’s happening? Where’s Sam? I tried to call him a few minutes ago and it went to voicemail but I know that’s a lie and something’s wonky because I _know_ my phones and – ”

Dean shoved him out of the way and paused behind the trunk, patting his pockets in a frantic flutter of hands. “KEYS.”

Simon’s eyes popped open wide and he hurried to Dean with a wad of keys, held in a fob the shape of a bullet. The trunk was flung open and Simon’s eyes got wider still. “Holy shit…”

“You know how to handle one of these?” Dean reached into the depths of the trunk, pushed aside exotic knives and silver flasks, and pulled out a small gun, pearl-handled and compact and beautiful. The air around the car smelled of gun oil and leather, exhaust, cold metal, incense. A snapshot of the Winchesters’ lives in hunting. The odor clung to the both of them, he and Sam, no matter how many showers they took. God damn Sam. Dean was gonna kill his brother if they made it out of this alive. “Can you shoot a gun?”

Simon tersely shook his head to the negative.

“I can.” A rough male voice spoke from the front of the car, and Dean poked his head around the raised trunk to see Danny, ol’ Eight Fingers, sauntering his way. Behind him, the other two magi, Benecio and Julian, followed as a taxi pulled off around the corner.

“Good. Here.” He gave the pearl handle to Danny without a second thought. Dean was certain the guy knew guns, as sure as he was that Sam knew the reproduction habits of the wendigo. Danny gave the weapon a quick once-over, checked the rounds with casual familiarity, and grinned his approval.

Benecio pulled up beside Danny, crazy mop of hair pulled off his face in a floral scarf, probably Eddie’s, that would’ve made Dean choke back a laugh if the situation hadn’t been so grim.

“I know guns, man. Lay it on me,” Benecio drawled. And Dean did, one of Sam’s spares. Julian, however, had a pinched expression that broadened into confusion when he saw the small arsenal in the Impala’s trunk. Dean assessed Julian’s potential and handed him a custom machete, the business edge partially serrated and blessed by a priest, a cross carved into the grip.

“Try not to cut off your own arm,” Dean said dourly.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Julian sniped back.

He had no real idea what they were up against and here he was, going in practically blind with a band of witches cum magi that had more in common with ‘The Pineapple Express’ than ‘Van Helsing’. In a last ditch effort to buy a clue, he used Eddie’s phone to call Bobby. The elder hunter picked up and was instantly livid when he heard Dean’s voice.

“Where you been, boy?! I’ve been calling you and your idjit brother for a half-hour now. You tryin’ to worry me into an early grave?”

Dean was so relieved to hear Bobby’s grumping the guy could’ve called him every name in the book and Dean would’ve thanked him for it and asked for more. “You heard from Sam, by any chance?”

Bobby’s crotchety voice got tight with apprehension. “Not lately. This morning, I did. He sent me photos from some nutcase’s notebook. Dean, do you have any idea what you’re messin’ with?”

“Not really; do you?”

“Do now. I won’t even try to pronounce the ancient Sumerian but ever heard of a ‘Feaster Within’?”

“Musta skipped that day in Monster Class. What the hell is it, Bobby?”

“A demonling. Like an underworld pit bull, a fleshbag full of nothin’ but mouths, designed to be guards for infernal sanctums. But here’s the really awesome part—” and from Bobby’s tone of voice, _awesome_ meant _God-damned disturbing_ “—these things incubate in the bodies of living women. Until they eat their way out.”

Dean felt a flutter in the pit of his stomach. “I hope that’s the bad news, Bobby.”

“Well, I s’pose it is. Rumor has it they aren’t hard to kill, all the normal stuff does ‘em in—salt, iron, holy water—but for God’s sake, son, don’t let them get their maws on ya. A single Feaster is as bad as a whole school of piranha.”

“Oh well that _is_ good news, Bobby.”

“Want me to blow a little more sunshine up your skirt? I think you’ve got bigger troubles if someone’s summoning Feasters. That’s some hella ancient evil, Dean. Usually summoned by bigger badder demons so you’d better be ready for an exorcism. You ‘n Sam be careful. Real careful. Call me as soon as you can. Don’t make me come down there and save your sorry asses.”

“You got it, Bobby. Thanks.” Dean snapped shut Eddie’s phone and handed it to her as she stood beside him, staring worriedly. Exorcism. Great. Sam was the one who knew the Latin backwards and forwards. Dean had the incant written on a folded piece of notebook paper, shoved into the back of his wallet, but he couldn’t spew it out on command like Sammy could.

Eddie didn’t ask about the monster; maybe she didn’t really want to know the gory details but nor was she panicking. Dean dared to take that as a good sign. “How can I help?” she asked.

Dean looked at her. Hard. He honestly didn’t want her to come with them; as much as it satisfied him to hold her accountable for All The Awful Things, he couldn’t anymore. There just wasn’t room for it, and he knew from the steely set of her shoulders, the unblinking earnestness in her great brown eyes, she wouldn’t wait at the car. “Gimme your purse.” And she did.

Eddie carried one of those absurdly huge shoulder bags, big enough to smuggle babies. Dean walked to the side of the car, leaned in the open shotgun window, dumped the entire contents of Eddie’s bag onto the seat and returned to the trunk. He grabbed every silver flask he could find and stuffed them inside the purse, along with handfuls of wooden rosary beads, a blessed scapula he got from Father Jim over twenty years ago, and several big blue cardboard canisters of Morton’s Salt.

“Demons,” Eddie said matter-of-factly.

Dean was sifting through the weaponry, gingerly avoiding blades, points, other such sharp bits of dangerous things, mindful not to forget anything important. “Yep.”

She looked thoughtful for a moment then disappeared around the raised trunk. Dean heard her shuffling about the car and when she showed back up, she had something secured in her fist.

“Take this.”

Hoisting the bag to assess its weight, he gave Eddie half a glance, moved on to checking his gun. “What is it?”

She opened her hand and in it sat a tiny glass vial. It looked hand-blown, imperfect and thick-sided, either end capped by ornate silver thimbles. Within the container rested a tiny sliver of white; the day was crisp, high noon, but Dean could’ve sworn the thing glowed. Just a vague issue of radiance, too bright in Eddie’s palm, a firefly under glass? Dean stopped what he was doing, leaning forward.

“It’s a holy relic,” Eddie said softly.

“A what? Where’d you get that?” Dean’s voice dripped with skepticism. Holy relic, his Aunt Fanny. He’d never seen an angel, a saint, a true miracle. In fact, he seriously doubted God even gave a rat’s ass if he existed at all. For all the otherworldly evil he’d witnessed, his experiences were sorely lacking in proof of the Divine.

“From Judah.”

“Crazy ex-boyfriend Judah? Awesome.” They’d talked about a great many things over a shared joint at Urban Oasis; old lovers was one of them. In cannabis veritas? Yeah, just a little.

“I know, I know. But he gave it to me before he went crackers. It’d been in his family for years. The Novaks have always been really devout people and they nearly disinherited him when he stopped going to church. So he stole it. Out of spite. And gave it to me because it’s supposed to keep you safe.” Eddie held it out to Dean and maybe, just maybe, it flickered more brightly for a second. If it wasn’t some sort of fan-damn-tastic holy relic, it had to be…something. “I was told to snap it open if I got into really dire straights.”

Dean snorted. “In case of emergency, break glass?”

“Something like that. Please, Dean, just…take it. What could it hurt?”

Simon’s voice, tremulous but determined, interrupted like a petulant four-year-old. “What could it hurt?! That just reminded me; we _can’t_ go to Chinatown.”

Dean took the relic, squinted, held it up for inspection. “Oh yeah? Whatsa matter? Scared? Won’t your mommy let you do it?”

“No, brainiac, these tattoos?” Simon shook his arm, the tips of his bright purple hair quivering in exotic bird-like plumage. “Sam figured out they weren’t for anti-scrying; these are wards, keeping us away from Chinatown. Specifically, he thinks, The Black Lotus.”

“Is that where Sam went?” Dean grimaced, pocketing the vial.

Simon nodded. “Anyone with this tattoo won’t be able to get down the block without freaking. Kinda makes sense, now that I know. I mean, we thought it was just shitty psychic energy keeping us out but –

“Huh. Lemme see that.” Dean grabbed Simon’s arm and before the kid could refuse, Dean had a knife out of his pocket, flicked open the blade, and sliced a nick in the inkwork. Simon yelped his eyes instantly and totally wounded. His lower lip might even have begun quivering. “Problem solved,” Dean said with a measured scowl, passing the knife to Eddie. She nodded, scarred her own tattoo with a tiny twitch and moved off to tackle the others’ wards.

Dean pushed Simon away from the car and slammed the trunk. He stared over at his makeshift army, with their copious amounts of hair and worried frowns and their Pollyanna ideas about magic and life and the supernatural, and thought to himself _Self? You are so fucking screwed…_


	11. Chapter 11

  


Two men dragged Sam across the room, neither of whom should’ve been strong enough to haul him any notable distance. His boots scraped along the floor, down the steps and bounced off sharp corners. He felt removed from the whole affair, a curious observer in his own body, numbed nearly insensible by whatever the demoness, Naamah, had done to him. His brain buzzed as though triple dosed on cold medicine, the disjointed sensation of his skull hovering like a balloon, tenuously tethered to his neck by the most slender of strings.

They were descending a long, steep staircase, but he noted it only vaguely. The light was too dim, his awareness too addled, to discern landmarks. He was, however, keenly aware of Naamah. She lead the parade and periodically tossed a Mona Lisa smile behind her, to Sam. He didn’t want to feel brightened by those moments, but he did. He found himself pinning his meager hopes on the creature; if survival was still a possibility, it rested in her elegant hands.

Sam couldn’t be certain how far they’d traveled and surely every inch of his lower half would be bruised before long. If he played the demons’ game, however—let Naamah believe he would ride on her Crazy Train and whoop “All aboard!”—maybe someone would get cocky, let his guard down, let slip a germ of information Sam could use to turn the tables. Or, better yet, help insinuate him further into Naamah’s favor. The woman held all the cards. She decided who lived and died. And Sam very much wanted to live; this he knew despite the way his reality shimmered like August heat off the hood of the Impala.

_The Impala. Dean. He’d called, didn’t he? Didn’t my phone ring?_ Sam vaguely recollected such an event and he could only hope it wasn’t wishful thinking or a replay of many past phone-calls from Winchester to Winchester.

His hearing, of all things, seemed the least effected by Naamah’s touch. Too bad, since no one was saying much of anything. Occasionally, one of the henchmen would crack a dirty joke at Sam’s expense or mention some other Sam. That confused him at first but gradually he realized they were saying Sammael, not Samuel. But wasn’t Sammael an angel? Sam wasn’t sure he could trust his brain to sort out memory from mumbo-jumbo.

It was increasingly frustrating and exhausting to clutch at thoughts that kept escaping, greasy and squirming. So when a sound erupted to his immediate left, Sam almost blessed the distraction. The men lugged him past an open door—hell, the only door he’d noticed since they’d hit the bottom of the stairs. The sound from within snagged his unsteady mind and gathered scattered thoughts into one steaming pile of fear. A moan. No, a wail. One that quickly climbed into wild shrieking. Definitely female. Followed by other sounds Sam couldn’t identify and wasn’t sure he ever wanted to. The demons appeared completely unruffled by the din. Of course.

They rounded a corner. Sam’s head lolled on his shoulders despite every effort to apply some control. A massive room opened before them, a cavernous space that bore no resemblance to modern construction. There was no door, or a least Sam hadn’t noticed one. Then again in his current condition, Sam might’ve missed tap-dancing frogs wearing top hats and singing show tunes.

Naamah gestured at an enormous, roughly carved chair. “Put him there.”

The lackeys hauled Sam into it like a sack of feed. The seat was uncushioned and slippery, and they had to resituate him three times before all his limbs were angled properly to support the dead weight.

A light was burning somewhere, albeit a faint one. Sam’s hair had fallen over his eyes and he could see only blurry slices of the room. Lots of dark and red and it smelled funny. Not funny _ha-ha_ but funny _wrong_ , like metal and rotten eggs and the same overly sweet scent from upstairs. Sam’s finger twitched. Hot damn, he was getting some control back, if only at the very tips of his extremities.

Naamah noticed. “Quickly! Jack, Cameron, light the candles, draw the circle.” Sam heard the clicking of her heels as she moved about the room, fabric shushing, the tinny sound of unknowable items being gathered. The atmosphere lightened by small degrees as Sam struggled to lift his head. The effort did little but trigger a migraine and strain a muscle in his neck. “Has the Feaster hatched? Sammael will be pleased to see them breeding again…”

One of the men answered; Sam wasn’t sure which. “I just checked. Not yet. Any moment, though; it’s moving.”

_Feaster?!_ Oh that could not be good. Not even a little. Sam shifted his legs and felt his body begin a slow slide out of the chair. A fresh throb of pain was starting to pound an Ian Paice drum solo in his gunshot arm. It was going to hurt like a bitch very, very soon. He knew because he’d been shot before, multiple times in fact. The bullet hadn’t nicked a major blood vessel though, or there would be more blood. He wouldn’t die—at least, not from the bullet hole.

He slid another few inches, biting his lip to hold back a groan, but that’s as far as he got before his lovely hostess returned her attention to him. She caught Sam under his armpits and propped him upright with alarming ease, taking a moment to tidy his shirt.

“Ah ah ah, Sam. The party hasn’t started yet, and you’ll miss the guest of honor. Oh, wait, you _are_ the guest of honor. Sort of.” The demoness reached down and picked up an enormous chalice—a ridiculously ornate goblet that looked like a prop. Ah, but Sam knew better. As a rule of thumb, demons did nothing halfway. Go big or go to Hell. The cup had heft, and the gems attached to its sides were massive rough-cut hunks of semi-precious stones, interspersed between intricately engraved hieroglyphs. Sam didn’t recognize the language.

She wafted it under his nose and he winced. The contents smelled intensely of wine, blood, and antiquity. Something old and lost to human memory. How he knew that, he couldn’t begin to guess. He just did. Naamah leaned forward, pressing her forehead to his, and spit into the liquid. _Spit_ in it. She nudged the cold metal rim to Sam’s mouth. God, he did not want the foul stuff to pass his lips! He gagged and turned away and his heels scrapping the floor. One hand—one small strong hand—caught Sam’s bicep where the bullet had passed. And squeezed.

His mouth popped opened like a baby bird’s, a squeak of pain escaping. The demoness poured the concoction past his gasping lips. Sam refused to swallow. The liquid dribbled down his chin and neck but the woman was determined. She released his arm to pinch his nose tight. The wine, far too fruity with an after bite of copper, hung thickly in Sam’s throat like strep. He gulped instinctively, clawed at Naamah with his good hand.

The rebellion didn’t last long.

Almost immediately, what remained of his numbness vanished, replaced by the warm lush feeling of…velvet. That’s the best way he could describe it. Velvet. Soft and rich and thick she was beautiful and why was he fighting her? What a futile thing to do because she wanted him, needed him, and this was all preordained, wasn’t it? Isn’t this exactly what Sam’s vision predicted?

He relaxed. Naamah set the goblet aside, stroked a hand through his hair. Sam smiled.

*

Breaching the tattoos’ borders seemed to do the trick; Dean’s motley crew had no trouble entering Chinatown and locating Hang Ah Alley. But that’s where things stalled out. It wasn’t even a big alley; so how the hell was he not finding someplace called The Black Lotus? Sounded like a massage parlor to Dean, and he approved of that notion completely.

Danny paced, Julian fretted, and Simon buzzed around with boatloads of nervous energy. At least thrice, Dean threatened to tie the kid to a lamppost just to get him to hold still for five bloody minutes. Benecio had sat his ass down on a curb and was firing up a smoke, no help whatsoever.

“Well, son of a bitch,” Dean said under his breath, squinting up at buildings, shading his eyes from the high California sun with one hand. He thought about trying to activate the GPS in Sam’s phone but Simon insisted it wouldn’t work, that somehow the device had gotten all fucked up.

Eddie sidled up to Dean, bumped his shoulder. “I have an idea. Dunno if it’ll fly but we really don’t have time to piddle, so…”

Dean shrugged but didn’t comment. Eddie took his silence to mean consent and strode purposefully over to Julian, pulled him aside, began talking to him in low, logical tones. Dean watched, brows rutted, as Julian’s expression segued from questioning to doubtful to something that looked an awful lot like dread. But Eddie was placating; she squeezed his arm, her eyes as undeniable as a whole wicker baskets full of kittens. Damn, she was good. A few moments more and Julian was nodding—though he clearly didn’t like what was being asked of him. He walked away from the group maybe ten feet, staring at the ground, hands stuffed into his coat pockets, shoulders taut. Then he started talking to himself. Eddie watched him keenly and Dean’s curiosity got the better of him. He joined her.

“What’s up?”

“He’s going to listen to the ghosts. Hopefully, they’re discussing possible weird shit going on here. In the alley.”

“Okay, but why doesn’t he just ask them? Or isn’t it a two-way street like that? You scratch my ectoplasm, I’ll scratch yours?”

Eddie gave Dean the stink-eye. “If they realize he can see them, talk to them, they won’t shut up. It’s like having the undivided attention of a whole class of needy kindergartners, except these kids can be violent or vindictive or mourful or just plain insane. You want that in your face all the time?”

Dean waved his hands in the visual equivalent of “Well excuuuuse me!” then turned his attention back to Julian. The man was now gesturing to thin air, eyes flaring with an unnerving gleam. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest-caliber crazy. Benecio had seen fit to move over to him, hovering like a mother hen. At one point, Benecio had his arm slung across Julian’s shoulders, speaking intently, grounding him to reality. Or at least that’s how it looked to Dean, which instilled absolutely no confidence in this rescue at all.

Finally, Julian slipped away from Benecio and stared at a wall. He lifted a hand, gestured vaguely before leveling a single finger. Dean had to close in on where Julian was pointing but now that he was focusing his attention, he saw it. Tucked back into shadow, a red door.

“Now we’re talkin’…” Dean grinned, making a beeline for the door, waving for the others to get with the program.

Cautiously, he tried the knob and found it unlocked. This could’ve meant Sam had already picked the thing, or someone was expecting them. Either way, it wasn’t slowing him down; he couldn’t pause to ponder such yakkity-smack.

The room was dark, silent, and yes, reminded Dean of a massage parlor, an upscale one. He hugged the wall, gun brought to the ready, cringing when clumsy footfalls crowded into the room behind him. Man, Sam was gawky but at least he could tiptoe when necessary. Dean hissed for quiet before moving farther into the room.

Danny flanked Dean, watching his back, clearly at ease with the scenario—something for which Dean was thankful. Simon accidentally let the door slam, a second something for which Dean was _not_. Everyone froze, awaiting detection that never came. Dean started breathing again and continued forward.

Julian was still twitching at things unseen, mumbling wordlessly to himself, Benecio right on his heels. Eddie clutched her shoulder bag to her chest, stilling the rattle of metal flasks as best she could.

“Th-there…” Julian said the single word aloud, eyes glaring down the sole hallway leading out of the room. A door stood open, lit faintly from within. Didn’t take a Rhodes Scholar to figure that’s where Julian meant. Dean gave a nod to Danny, his temporary Sam, and the pair blazed the trail down the hall.

As they neared, Dean could see the room was empty, its only living inhabitant an impressive potted palm that took up the better part of a corner. Eddie stood in the doorway, one eye on the lookout for unexpected guests. Simon found Sam’s coat on the floor and pawed through the folds. He pulled out a Moto Q that had clearly been crushed under someone’s heel. The kid’s mouth was pulled in a forlorn frown.

“Doesn’t mean anything,” Dean whispered tersely, eyes scanning the room. His gaze landed on the desk where he recognized a pile of junk. Sam’s junk. Before long, Benecio caught sight of Sam’s gun under the corner of a chair. Okay, great, now _that_ meant something; it meant Sam was virtually unarmed, save his boot knife. At least he couldn’t lose his big damned brain.

As if he’d started talking to plants as well as phantoms, Julian twitched his way to the tree in the corner, lips working. Hhe moved aside a particularly large frond, revealing a slice in the paneling, a thin line where it didn’t belong. A secret door. “They say here. HERE.”

Benecio shushed Julian quickly but kindly, and guided the Brit aside to make room for Dean, who was not wasting a second. Shoot first, ask questions never.

He pushed the nigh-invisible door gently and it snicked open, freeing a blast of weird, cold air into the room. It smelled distinctly different, in the way Dean knew the things he hunted did. Stale and archaic and faintly brimstone-scented. He felt the magi gather behind him like cats at a fishbowl and had to jerk his shoulder to dislodge Simon before he could advance. A staircase unfurled downward from the door. Wooden steps groaned under his weight. Dean winced, willing them to shut the hell up. There was no hand railing and the treads seemed short; Dean had to not only step lightly but carefully, or his big boots would overshot a riser and he’d wind up tits over tail. Exotic designs papered the wall, vaguely oriental or Asian or whatever the pc terminology was—Sam would know. The odd thing was, well _odder_ thing anyway, was that the designs seemed to be moving. For a moment he thought it was a trick of the nearly nonexistent light, but then Eddie validated the optical illusion with a whisper in Dean’s ear.

“It’s Dark Path magic, Dean. Judah told me it warps the things around it, gives itself away.” Somehow she knew he was seeing the worming shapes, and for once he was glad she was with him. If anything, she was a fountain of magical knowledge. Between her and Danny, they made up a complete Sam. She was about to say something else when Dean heard a rustle from the end of the stairs. Or a hiss. Whatever the case, he lifted his hand for silence and stood frozen. The magi bumbled into each other before finally following suit and there was a sharp inhale as Benecio almost lost his footing.

There it was again, the rasping sound, but now it more closely resembled a voice. A dry, pained whimper, to Dean’s ears. He hit the bottom of the staircase and flattened against a wall, slipping along with practiced stealth, forgetting for a heartbeat that he had the entire cast of “Charmed” clodding along behind him. Halfway down this second hall a door stood ajar, seemingly carved from an enormous knotty slab of wood, its knob a wrought iron latch, probably older than the building itself. Dean palmed the door, pushed it open slowly. It took a fair amount of force; the thing weighed a ton.

More dim lighting. What was it with evil? Did it always require darkness to thrive, like mold or fungus? The hallway was marginally brighter, illuminated by gas-lit sconces as there didn’t seem to be electricity in this part of the building. Dean opened the door wider, sending a sheet of illumination into the room and revealing plain wooden floors, quite unlike the opulence of the rest of the place. Then, as he peered deeper into the gloom, a human leg. Shit.

Dean entered with a fresh sense of urgency, scrambling the penlight from his jacket pocket with his off hand. A tight beam of bluish light speared the dark, leveling across bare walls, dirty floors, until it flashed upon a person, a girl. He rushed forward and dropped to a crouch, finding the girl’s face with illumination. And he knew that face from a photograph in the newspaper.

“Janey!” Eddie gasped, landing in a flash on her knees beside Dean.

Ah, the barista who read palms or tarot or tealeaves, Dean recalled. He snapped out an arm to restrain Eddie, in case this Jane had become something other than human, or just as bad, something very, very dead. Slipping two fingers under the curve of the girl’s throat, Dean found a thin, thready pulse and exhaled with relief. “Help her. I’m gonna see if there’re more people in here.” Eddie gave a quick nod and began murmuring soothing words as Dean moved off.

“I found Felicity,” Danny said from the east corner of the room.

Dean heard tentative indications of activity as the magi fanned out, What he _didn’t_ hear was Sam, and he wished he’d thought to bring more flashlights. Maybe Sam’s was still in his coat upstairs—

“Is…who’s here?” The voice was weak and uncertain, groggy as though still half-shrouded in sleep. Sweetly familiar. Dean nearly tripped over someone, something, getting to it. And so did Julian, apparently.

“Sylvie!” both said, in unison—which was more than a little awkward as they bumped shoulders and scrambled to her aid. Dean had half a mind to shove Julian onto his pasty British ass but, in the interest of cooperation, generously curbed the urge.

Sylvie dragged herself up on elbows, squinting in the vestigial glow of Dean’s light, which he’d aimed away so as not to blind her. She looked woozy but remarkably with-it, eyes smudged with dark bruises that could just as easily been mascara just as weariness. Her eyes scanned from Julian to Dean, blinking, and she said each name in turn. Julian was the first to act, grabbing her into an embrace that felt, to Dean, far too desperate for anything platonic. He smiled wanly.

“Oh god, Sylvie, are you okay? Are you okay?” Julian was running his hands over her face, fingers smoothing shorn dark locks, almost tearing up. “Your hair…”

“Did it myself, you like?” She coughed a weak laugh and tried to sit up with Julian’s help. Her fingers quivered as she pulled at his sleeve and she winced, dropping a hand to a dark patch on her side. Looked rusty and stiff. Old blood. “Dean, wow. I owe Bobby a big kiss for finding you guys. Is…is Sam here too?”

“Somewhere,” Dean said, chucking her chin gently with a knuckle. Again, he inwardly wished Julian would make like horseshit and hit the trail. “How you feelin’? You hurt? What’re we dealing with here?”

Sylvie scrubbed at her eyes, settled as comfortably as she could. She lifted up the corner of her shirt and Dean spotlighted a wound, well-scabbed. He’d seen worse. Sylvie dropped her shirttail; so had she. “Been better. Demons, Dean. Of the highest order, I’m thinkin’. Don’t let her touch you, the Chinese bitch. Numb you clean out of your senses. That’s what she’s been doing to us.”

“Us? How many others are there?”

“Dunno. Haven’t had the chance to do much research, being paralyzed and all. But…” Her eyes widened as something seemed to occur to her, and she used Julian to stumble to her feet, Dean reaching out a hand. “Shit. There might be – ”

Noise crashed through the room in overlapping waves, sudden as a car wreck: first a teasing, tremulous moan, then a wet rending sound, and finally an ear-splitting shriek. Horrified peals. Dean’s first impression was of a cat in a meat grinder, but then he recognized the timber of the voice. Simon. A warm sluice of liquid struck his cheek. And then another. Then the screaming stopped. There was a frantic gnashing of teeth, slurping, swallowing. The beam of Dean’s light caught bright flares of red and the glisten of dripping teeth—so many, he couldn’t begin to count.

“KILL IT!” Sylvie screamed, and she didn’t need to scream twice.

Dean had armed himself with a sawed-off and he dropped the penlight to blast at the horror with both hands, the explosion booming off the hard surfaces of the empty room. If the group had had a single hope of surprise, it was shot to hell now. Salt rounds pinged off of walls and floor and bodies but, judging from the fleshy shrapnel, it did the trick. Blew the demonling to Kingdom Come, or more likely, back to its infernal hometown.

Julian let go of Sylvie and clamped palms over his ears, left them there long after the sound of Dean’s blast stopped echoing. He was rocking himself and mumbling, his face the unpleasant color of fish belly. All things considered, he looked worse than Sylvie but Dean’s immediate concern was _what the fuck was that?!_

He retrieved his light and carefully stepped to the mess, wary not to slip in gore. No one else had the presence of mind to move except Sylvie, who was following.

“Awesome.” Dean growled, looking down at what once had been a girl, her middle flayed open in a tangle of innards. Not a foot from her, sat Simon. Or rather Simon’s head. The rest of him was...elsewhere.

“Aw, Simon.” Sylvie’s voice whispered soft and sad at Dean’s elbow.

Dean got urgent, fast. They didn’t have the luxury of examination or even heavy strategy. “All right, listen up! We’ve gotta get outta here. Anyone find more girls? And for god’s sake, are they empty?!”

“I’ve got Felicity and Jane over here,” Danny said, and Dean confirmed with a quick scan of the penlight that they all seemed disoriented and Feaster-less.

“I’ve got Sprite.” That was Benecio, and again Dean flicked the light to the sound of the stoner’s voice, satisfied by what he saw.

Jane had fumbled her way to Sylvie and Dean, cheeks wet with fresh tears and a few errant splatters of red. “And that was Hannah.”

Dean turned to her, no nonsense. “You and Sylvie, take the girls and go back exactly the way we came and do not stop until you get to your house, you got that?”

But Eddie shook her head, smearing salty water and blood with a sleeve. “No. I won’t leave. I have to see this through. I feel responsible.”

And Sylvie punched Dean’s arm, narrowing her eyes into stubborn slits. “You cannot make me go, Dean Winchester. Don’t be a dick.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic.” Dean suppressed an off-color comment about women’s lib and scrubbed a sticky hand over his face.

“He’s not doing so well though,” Eddie said with a nod towards Julian, her voice still thick with tears. “The ghosts, they don’t care if we’re in the middle of a crisis.”

“Fine.” Dean found Julian’s machete on the floor at his feet and gave it to Sylvie. With a rough shove that felt good, Dean had to admit, he corralled Julian and the remaining three girls and ushered them out the door with specific directions to get their asses to safety. The girls, like Sylvie, seemed unsteady but coming ‘round, none the worse for wear. If Julian insisted upon having a string of ‘I see dead people’ moments, Jane the fortune-telling barista could run the show.

“So you said Sammy was here somewhere?” The machete flashed in Sylvie’s fist as she measured its weight and balance.

Dean worked very hard at keeping the worry off his face. “Yeah, about that…”

*

Sam tried to make sense of it all. Of the soft and the red and the warm scent of candles and how the light guttered as it reached the corners of this big room and why he just did not care. Not care about leaving. Not care about the chanting from two simple men—he could see the pair of them, their lips moving in unison—as it filled his ears with unfamiliar music that made his belly flutter, stage-fright anxious and Christmas morning happy. Except there had never been a happy Christmas morning for Sam. This might’ve been what it felt like, though. The knowledge that there were presents waiting, secrets to be revealed and they were rich and beautiful and everything his heart had ever wanted. That they were selected especially for him, no one else, and everything was perfectly placed.

But that never happened to him before, not Sam Winchester. He didn’t get Christmas, or to finish college or to marry the indescribably wonderful girl of his dreams. It was all dangled in front of him, carrot before the horse, just so some cruel fate could take it all away in one spark, one bead of blood dripped from one ceiling. And then another. Reminding him in premonitions then dreams then reality then memories that he would never have good things, he had no reason to wish for good things. They would all be taken away because that was Sam’s life. Indelibly fucked up.

Then there was Dean. Big, heroic Dean. So cocksure of himself, all black and white and right and wrong and smart enough to keep his desires simple and straightforward. Straight-as-the-crow-flew Dean, without hesitation or optimism, just the steadfast belief in forward motion. Nothing a shot of whiskey and a give ‘em hell attitude couldn’t tackle. It wasn’t that Sam wanted to _be_ Dean or follow in his footsteps. Sam always had an extraordinary sense of self, to the point of single-mindedness, from a very young age. He just wanted to be Dean’s equal. Not a burden. Not a responsibility. But then maybe that was one of those things Sam had no business wanting. One of those good things.

So in that moment after Naamah had delicately chalked a complicated design onto the surface of a stone slab, her herbs and spices scenting the air with mystery, Sam made a decision. This. This was what his premonition had foretold. In making it real, in letting his vision play out as predicted, Sam was creating prophecy. The worm was turning. When Naamah asked for his hand, some twisted mockery of marriage, Sam offered it. She cradled his long fingers in her tiny palm and slipped an ancient blade across his lifeline, smiling softly as the blood welled dark and absolute. Sam’s heart stuttered, his puppet heart, strings pulled this way and that under the will of the Queen of the Succubi. Blood pooled from his palm into a rough-hewn bowl and drizzled over a nest of carefully chosen dried things.

Naamah cast a sideward glance to her altar boys and they quieted. Then, she struck a wooden match.

*

The cellar, even from where Dean stood thirty feet down the hall, wore all the earmarks of a ritual chamber, right down to the sulfurous stink, ominous chanting and flickering candles throwing shadows into chaos. Nothing good ever came from chanting, as far as Dean was concerned. Not even the Gregorian variety. That shit just made his ears bleed. And this shit right here? It made Dean thunder down the hallway, stealth be damned, and want to unleash a world of salt-soaked hurt on the first black-eyed douchebag that crossed his path.

Sylvie hustled right behind, humming to herself. Made Dean smile; she always hummed when she hunted. Said it calmed her nerves. Like whistling while you worked. Whatever the case, it succeeded because they hit the archway at the same time, Dean pausing to let her pass and Sylvie dropping low so Dean could fire a round over her head without interruption. Perfect form. If any creeper was hanging out by the open doorway, Sylvie could cut it but good.

Salt blew through the chamber like toxic snow, slamming into the back of one of two men who had the misfortune to be standing closest to the hunters. If he was human, well, Dean would apologize later. And if he wasn’t? Dean just won the prize.

The tall, thin scarecrow of a man snarled and whirled on the intruders, eyes like pooled ink and movements stutter-start fast. His heavy gray coat had armored him against most of the salt but he was smoldering in small wisps at the back of head, his clenched hands.

_Fuck me, that’s the homeless guy_ , Dean recognized him now, and it all fell into place, where his phone went. He’d been trailing Dean all over the God damned city. Dean pumped another round into the chamber and leveled it at Scarecrow’s chest.

“You’re kinda starting to piss me off,” he said, almost conversationally.

The demon shrugged, flashed a grin full of crooked teeth. “Sorry, Dean, just doing my job, man. You get that, right?”

“Right, I get that.”

The shotgun reported, propelling the man backwards. Sylvie fell on him fast, the machete a blur. But she wasn’t humming; she had murder in her eyes and Dean left her to her work.

The room was basic, and for that Dean thanked his lucky stars. Few blind corners and hiding spots, except within the shadows themselves. Cellar-dank and cold as a cave, the air and adrenaline made him shudder and he pushed forward, gaze scanning for an exceptionally tall, exceptionally shaggy head. The second man had slipped out of sight. Dean saw Benicio’s gun flare and a bullet pinged off the floor.

“Dude!” Dean flinched, darting a scowl at Benecio, who was silhouetted by candlelight.

“Sorry – ” Benecio might’ve said more but the words were squeezed behind a grunt and he dropped like a rock, dragged into a dark corner. Dull thuds, fists beating muscle and bone, but Dean didn’t dare fire into the black. A face full of rock salt wouldn’t kill a man but it’d blind him and Dean couldn’t risk that.

Eddie was moving fast, though, rummaging in her shoulder bag and fishing out a silver flask. She uncorked the container and flung holy water where Benecio went down. Over and over, she threw glimmering, blessed streams until the flask ran dry. Then she opened a second, began again. The corner hissed like a sauna, rotten-egg steam rolling across the floor on a flood of expletives. Until silence. She readied a third flask.

Benecio threw himself away from the stink and into the light, soaking wet and bloodied, one eye already puffy and fixing to swell shut. “Shoot it!” he yelled. “It’s got my gun!”

Eddie stammered. “But—but I don’t h-have a gun!”

Danny did, took a wide step beside her, and emptied bullets into the dark corner. The steam was replaced by a thick, viscous roll of black smoke that tore across the floor like a living thing, roiling and screaming and looking for escape. It banked off walls until breaking for the doorway, disappearing down the hall, leaving soot in its wake.

The magi all gawked, in unison.

“Amateurs…” Dean grunted, heading for the far side of the long, windowless room. The candles had been extinguished and he was forced to depend upon his penlight again, which sucked because it made it harder to shoot. “Sam! Sam, if you’re in here – ”

“I’m here, Dean.”

Dean froze, on the spot. Sam’s voice was dripping with wrongness, too smooth, too casual. He caught his breath and just listened.

“Dean? Are you coming?”

He took a careful step forward, cheek twitching as a rivulet of sweat trickled from his temple. The penlight’s beam made a slow arc, passing over furniture, if one could call an occult altar furniture. The surface had clearly been prepared for a ritual or rite of some sort, replete with unholy markings and all the fixings of a summoner’s picnic. As he drew the beam beyond that, Dean saw a flash of red satin and above that yet, the milk-white swell of a bosom. And it wasn’t Sam’s.

“Where’s my brother?” Dean demanded, narrowing eyes and advancing another step.

“He’s here, Dean. But you need to take your little friends and go. He’s bored with you; I’m so much more interesting than an overbearing bully.”

The woman moved forward into Dean’s light more directly, slipping around a weighty wooden chair as a boa might slip around a rabbit. Sam was sitting in the chair and he looked peaceful.

_Peaceful?!_ Dean swore under his breath and lowered the shotgun because not only did he want to avoid blasting Sam, the woman had a rather impressive knife to his throat. Sam’s own boot knife. He was already bloodied, a wound to the upper arm, but his famously broad forehead was unworried. He might even have been wearing a vague smile.

“Sam? Sammy? You need to leave with me, man.”

“I don’t think so, Dean. This is where I’m meant to be. Naamah, she needs me.” He canted his head and leaned into the knife’s edge and Dean saw a thin line of red race from the blade’s tip to Sam’s collar. “And it’s Sam.”

There was a flurry of motion to Dean’s left. Apparently, Danny was sick of all the chit-chat; his gun-hand appeared in Dean’s peripheral vision, all silver and dangerous and far too near Dean’s ear. Before Dean could so much as say “What the fuck are you crazy?!” the demoness flicked a finger and Danny’s head did a 180 degree spin. Eddie gasped, and Danny hit the floor. Preternatural toughness or no, a snapped neck was pretty much a deal breaker.

When Naamah spoke again, she didn’t sound amused, not in the least. “Now why don’t you stop being rude and enjoy your ringside seat to my husband’s arrival, hmm? It’s not every day you get to witness the resurrection of a Sammael, the Angel of Death.”

“Name dropper,” Dean sneered.

God help him, Sam was smiling in earnest this time. But Dean would never leave. Not in a _googolplex_ of years. No amount of supernatural pheromones or psychosis would force Dean’s retreat, unless Sam agreed to come with.

Dean cut a glance to Sylvie, who had moved up on his right to stare, incredulous, at the proceedings.

“Dean,” she murmured, shoulders held tense but with a glimmer in her eye. “This is Funkytown, man…”

Weird thing to say, yeah, but Dean knew what she was thinking. It was a code word she and Sam and Dean made up one summer on a skinwalker hunt in Vermillion, South Dakota. It meant they were all in trouble, big fat trouble, and if they didn’t act fast the shit was gonna hit the ol’ fan. Sylvie was no better than Dean with exorcisms so they’d best just shut up and do something. Desperate times and all.

Dean winked an eye. “On three…one, two – ”

Neither of them waited for three. Sylvie had gotten her hands on Benecio’s lost gun and quick as a whip, she began shooting high to cover for Dean. Dean got off one blast of the sawed-off, slamming into the demoness and unfortunately, Sam, before the shotgun was ripped from his grip by unseen forces, nearly taking his thumb with it. Sylvie threw herself in front of the stone altar, out of Naamah sights. And for a heartbeat, Dean felt a flush of panic.

He had no gun. Sam was snarling, palms pressed to his face where the salt must be burning like a bitch, and Naamah’s eyes had gone as red and bright as radioactive raw meat.

Dean plunged his hands into his pockets, looking for a miracle. Instead he found a vial. Smooth and fragile and unremarkable.

“Here goes nuthin’…” Dean grabbed the relic with thumb and forefinger by either end and bent it ‘til it broke.

And then the world bled white.


	12. Chapter 12

  


It was dusk and the cloud-flecked sky was transmuting from day to the bruised shades of evening, Prussian blue and magenta and dirty orange. The beach sat empty for miles except for the pair of them, as it was just a touch too chilly to be pleasant, the water too cold. Technically the beach closed at night but no one had asked them to move along so they didn’t. She and Dean, they just sat there niched into each other, pressed against the sand as the last warmth of the day soaked into their backsides.

The wind picked up and Sylvie opportunistically wedged under Dean’s arm, a cozy fit. His soft belly pressed to the small of her back and oh how she loved that belly, a side-effect of his somewhat indiscriminate eating and drinking habits, a perfect bit of imperfection, defense against the hard muscle beneath. That was Dean, in a nutshell. A whole lotta hard, a disarming smidgeon of soft. Sylvie’s fine, short wispy hair caught in the stubble on his chin and she felt his breath puff out, probably because it tickled.

They’d already done enough talking that day, so sitting there in the quiet, just listening to the waves pound the sand and watching as the moon replaced the sun was entirely fine. Preferable, in fact, because frankly, Sylvie wanted to keep her thoughts to herself in this moment.

A lot had happened. Too much. She was already filling the hole in her heart left by Julian with preoccupying thoughts: the next possible hunt, cuddling with Dean. There were mumblings of strange animal attacks here in the city but Sylvie wasn’t altogether certain she could take any more of San Francisco. Maybe she’d just head north to Washington and hang out for a while. Do some hiking. Unhook. Get a proper haircut.

She understood why Julian left, why all the magi had to leave. Too much attention, too many blips on other hunters’ radars. And too many questions asked by the authorities that no one could begin to answer in a believable fashion. So now the strange blue house with the peeling paint and verdant yard sat lonely and empty almost overnight. As though a great flood had swept through and shoved everything to the racing current of a river and carried it away with hardly a pause. Like a natural disaster, an act of God. There one minute, the next, gone.

Now, the fire in Chinatown, at Hang Ah Alley? That _had_ been an act of God. No ands, ifs or buts about it. A holy explosion that left Sylvie nearly blind and deaf for three days and The Black Lotus a burnt-out shell. It confused the daylights out of the fire department when they showed up but, after a fashion, they just stopped looking for answers. Because there weren’t any. Hell, no one knew the place even existed until it didn’t anymore.

Sylvie did keep a memento, though. She touched her upper left collarbone where plastic and tape itched over a healing tattoo. They’d all gotten them from a parlor in North Beach that knew how to cook up magickal ink, golf-ball sized sigils that thwarted possession by demons. But only after confirming with Bobby the symbol was legit; he snarked about them doubting his research until they told him the tale of the anti-scrying debacle, after which he softened considerably. Might even have thought it was a good idea, given Sam’s propensity to be a demon magnet.

Sam. Sylvie had very mixed emotions about that one. Sure, she loved him like a brother, probably always would. But he was changing in ways Sylvie couldn’t quite put her finger on. The last time they’d been together was just before he’d left for Stanford, all rangy and coltish and hopeful and willful. He was still willful, but the rest was gone. Stripped away or rather calloused over, the underlying bits hiding raw and wounded. Dean tried to explain about Jessica but Sylvie could tell he was greatly abridging the story. She didn’t push, though. She had her own secrets and sometimes, secrets needed to be kept.

“Took you long enough, cabana boy.” Dean looked up and over as Sam returned from a beer run, his backpack fat and rattling with cold cans. They were pretty damned sure alcohol wasn’t allowed on the beach. Then again, neither were they. In for a penny, in for a pound. Sam passed around the PBR and stretched out beside Dean and Sylvie, pressed against them both. Sylvie reached over and ruffled his hair, longer than hers, dammit all. Sam always had the prettiest hair for a nerd, effortlessly cute with his dimples and heathery eyes and way too much leg. Would it break his face to smile more often? Ah well, a leopard couldn’t be expected to change its spots.

So they lay there, drinking cheap beer, and watching as day vanished and the stars came out. Still not talking, but that was okay. Nearly an hour and a twelve-pack spun out. Sylvie got up for a good stretch, her side still twinging where she had been stabbed but there again, that was okay too. Better than the alternative. They were alive and breathing and young enough to foolishly believe in endless possibilities. She walked by herself to the water’s edge and let the surf touch her shoes. Now that the sun had set, the wind was dying. Clouds began to collect more densely, darker shapes in a dark sky, obscuring portions of the starry universe.

Sylvie looked back at the boys. They hadn’t moved an inch. So like them. Salt and pepper, completely different but one never mentioned without the other. And despite the fact nothing was certain but change, Sylvie was certain Dean would always be there to break Sam’s fall, and Sam would always be Dean’s light when he lost his way. It took an outsider to make that realization. And someone as smart as Sylvie.

  


  



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